Close Encounters 14
by chezchuckles
Summary: A View To A Kill. Castle chases Beckett to Tunisia where she's being held by Black.
1. Chapter 1

**Close Encounters 14: A View To A Kill**

* * *

><p><em>for Jessie<em>

_all the Black your heart desires_

* * *

><p>Kate Beckett pushed her shoulder blades to the back of the chair and kept as still as she could make herself. It had been three hours since Castle had hung up on her, and although part of her was terrified he wouldn't come - she deserved nothing less - mostly she was sick at heart knowing he would.<p>

He always would.

Black sat in the canteen across from her, his presence filling the room. She had a tray in front of her with the usual processed and freeze dried food, but Black ate as if it were the height of cuisine.

She didn't think she could swallow.

"Come now, Kate," Black said suddenly. His eyes were startling when he looked at her, as if he knew every secret. Deleware and another main in camo gear were at the door, probably as a guard, but she didn't know for whom. To keep her here or to keep her from doing damage to John Black?

"I'm not hungry," she said tightly.

"Of course not. That's your usual m.o., isn't it? Self-destructive and self-sabotaging to the end. How do you think I got you here? You will always do what's least beneficial for yourself."

"I'm sorry, but is this a therapy session?"

"Free of charge," Black smiled.

Her skin crawled. "I have a therapist, thanks. And we're doing quite well."

"In four years, I sincerely hope you've made progress. But here's what I know. You're going to wreck yourself in a bid for pity or attention so that when my son arrives, he either lashes out at _me_ for your state or he comes crawling straight to _you_ in some misguided messiah complex he has when it comes to you. Forget the sins of the world, he will crucify himself trying to get to a broken, fallen Kate Beckett."

She sucked in a breath past the stab of it in her lungs, but Black had never told her anything other than the truth. Slanted, yes; a truth that was skewed heavily in his favor, but the kernel remained accurate.

She did this to herself. She did it to him. She'd done it again.

"Whatever," she sighed, feigning indifference. "Hate me, despise me, belittle and humiliate me. So long as you give him the regimen, what he needs to _live_, then I'll fucking crucify myself for you. You don't even need the hammer and nails, Black. You just need me."

"Truer words," he sighed, an actual smile sliding across his face. He quickly smothered it, as if it was both odious and distasteful to him to take pleasure in this. And she supposed - for him - it really was. He wanted only to maintain his machine, get it back in good working order, and Beckett was a serious obstacle. That Black should take any pleasure at all in removing the obstacle was obscene.

Deleware remained impassive at the door and her cheekbone still ached with the bruise of the bullet's passage. She'd gotten a look at her reflection in the shiny side of the canteen's serving window, and Castle was going to freak if he saw this.

"I need to go to the bathroom," she said numbly.

"Eat first."

"I can't eat when I have to pee," she spat out.

"What the fuck do I care about the order?" Black said. His words were quick but in control. "Eat."

She fisted her hand around the fork and shoved the damn eggs into her mouth, those made-from-powder things that tasted more like cardboard and pencil shavings. She hated eggs. She never wanted to see eggs again.

"Very good. When you've cleaned your plate, Deleware or Maine will take you to the bathroom. No bullets this time, Del, do you understand?"

"Yes, sir. I understand perfectly."

Kate glanced up at him and the ice in his eyes and the way _perfectly_ curled on his tongue, she knew it would be some other horror awaiting her when he got her alone.

Holy shit, she really hadn't thought this through. She'd never expected to have to survive any of this.

Beckett made slow work of her eggs and tried to think of a plan.

* * *

><p>"Castle, Castle - come on, man, no. This is not the way."<p>

He paced the length of the room, shaking Mitchell off as the man tried to hold him back. "Then what _is _the damn way, Mitchell? Because my _wife is out there-_"

"I know that. I know. But you think walking into Black's trap is going to save either of your lives?"

Mitch had called him two seconds after he'd hung up with Kate, and even though he'd answered, he knew he hadn't been making any sense. Mitchell had double-parked in front of the house and overrode the alarm system from his phone, all the while pounding on the door and calling Castle's name.

He'd been numb when Mitch had gotten the safety locks to disengage, numb when Mitch had found him in the empty - God, so empty - extra bedroom. Even now, he paced the living room because nothing was registering, nothing seemed to make it through.

"I can be out there in - what did the Air France website say?"

"No flights until tomorrow morning."

"That's twenty-four hours," he said, stopping dead at the far wall. "I can't - she can't be with him another _damn day_-"

"Castle. Listen to me. You can't go flying out there-"

"Like hell I'm-"

"Will you sit the fuck down? You're giving me motion sickness. Sit down. Sit. Down." Mitchell's grip was either suddenly a hundred times more forceful than Castle had ever known the man to possess, or the numbness was affecting his balance.

He sank onto the Ugly Couch and buried his head in his hands. "I have to. He said - I have to. She won't... she said she wasn't under duress."

"She use the all-clear code?"

"Yes," he whispered, grief making a run at the numbness and lancing through his chest. "Yes. She did."

"Shit," Mitchell said softly. "She's choosing to stay with him."

He groaned and dug his fingers through his hair, gripping hard enough to send ripples of pain along his scalp. "She's choosing... yes. Because of the damn regimen. She thinks she can get Black to just _hand it over_."

"Then we need a plan. More than ever. You hear me, Rick? I know you want to haul ass over there, but we have to think this through."

"I don't know how we could possibly-"

"You said there was another way. You keep saying that. Well, listen to your own damn advice. How do you expect _her_ to find another way when it comes to saving your ass if _you_ can't do the same?"

Castle rocked back into the couch, the ache threatening to crack the ice around him. "What other way?" he pleaded. "Tell me. Anything. I'll do anything. Just - just-"

"We cover all our bases. We assemble a damn strike team, Castle. We go in after her, we clear the building. This is search and rescue, you hear me? We won't leave her behind."

Search and rescue. Search and rescue. "O-kay," he grounded out. "Okay. And-"

"If we take Black alive, fine. If not. We don't."

The regimen. Fuck, even as he wanted only to get Beckett _away_ from his father, there was a stabbing reminder that he needed those damn pills - that _she_ needed him to have those damn pills. And if it wasn't now, today, then it'd be next week she was doing some other fucking insane suicidal mission to get them.

"We'll try to take him alive," Castle said. "We have to try to... salvage this. Damn it, I want to kill her myself."

"She's ballsy as hell, I'll tell you that."

Castle pressed his fists into his eyes. "I can't believe she did this. I can't... does she have so little respect for her own life?"

"Pot, meet kettle," Mitchell muttered. Castle felt the sting of the man's punch into his shoulder and then Mitch was gripping the collar of his shirt, hard, hauling him up. "Now get on your damn feet and stop grieving for her. She's not dead yet."

Oh, God, if she died for this. If she _died_ for this-

* * *

><p>Kate pressed her hands to her thighs to keep them from trembling as she walked just in front of Deleware down the hall. She expected, at any moment, retaliation for her groin kick on the boat. Behind her, the other man, Maine, kept a gun on her.<p>

Actually, she expected retaliation for whatever consequences Deleware had gotten for shooting at her and bloodying her face. Because _that_ Black was actually displeased with, and after that conversation over cardboard eggs, she realized it was only because Black thought it would make Castle sympathetic towards her.

When he might not otherwise be - that was the unspoken idea.

Black had no clue; he couldn't possibly understand how it was between her and Castle. How much more it was than some cheap womanly wiles or whatever Black assumed she'd used to seduce his son. A long time ago, Black had shed whatever emotions were required for a potential relationship with Castle's mother and he'd never looked back.

So Black would never get it. What she was willing to do for Castle. What Castle was willing to do for her.

And even as that was their weakness, it was also their greatest strength. And _that_ she could use.

Unfortunately, there wasn't a hell of a lot available to her right now.

So she marched behind Deleware and turned when he did, trying to memorize the lay of the land. She'd studied the station maps before she'd flown into Tunisia; she'd learned the tides and reefs surrounding the island, knew the place like she knew her own home.

Deleware paused and gestured her ahead of him. "Left through the door," he commanded.

The facility was set up like an old Ottoman villa. She knew there was a women's side to the house which connected to the front hall by one locked door, and she assumed it was that harem side she was in right now. It had been where the sultan's girls were locked in at night, so it was the easiest part of the villa to control.

She imagined the door at the end of the hall connected to the court yard and the fountain in the center that she'd spied before. The plans had showed an orange tree growing beside the fountain and an ornate bench below it, but she had no way of knowing if it was still there. If so, there might be cover under its branches. If not, the court yard should be avoided at all costs.

Snipers were most likely positioned in the second floor balcony. She couldn't believe Black didn't have heavy manpower with him, even if she hadn't seen it yet.

"Here," Deleware said. She startled when she felt his hand curl in the back of her shirt and jerk her to a stop. Her heart tripped and fell.

She opened the door before her and saw the bare toilet, the pedestal sink. A kind of shower had been installed at the far end, a circular ring above it suggesting the idea of a curtain at one time. She shuffled inside and glanced at the mirror to check out the wound.

Maine stayed outside, but Deleware came inside with her and shut the door.

She stared at him.

"Do your business."

"Not with you in here," she demanded.

"Do what you need to do or let's go."

Holy shit.

"Fine," he said dispassionately. "We go." HE reached for her arm to haul her outside.

"No," she back-pedaled, tugging hard. "No. I - I have to go."

She didn't; she'd wanted the time to think, plan, wash her face and tend to the gap of flesh in her ear that still burned from the alcohol. But now it occurred to her that she might not get another chance to go, and she wasn't entirely sure that Black would _care_ one way or another.

"Turn around," she told Deleware.

"_Sweetheart_," he mimicked, a cruel smile twisting his mouth. "I've seen you a lot worse than naked. All those surveillance videos."

"Turn around."

"Who the fuck has the weapon here?"

She stood, mute and furious in front of him, and then she realized she was going to have to do it. This was his retaliation for that kick in the groin since he couldn't leave a mark.

Kate could leave. Technically, she wasn't a prisoner here - or so Black had said. She'd chosen to stay of her own free will because Black had the regimen and he wanted Castle face-to-face. They only way he'd get that was if Beckett's was the face her husband saw first.

She could walk out right now.

But she wouldn't get the regimen. And all of this would be for absolutely nothing. She wasn't even sure Castle was ever going to forgive her for this, wasn't sure that love could surmount a betrayal so deep, and if burning to ashes the best thing that had ever happened to her - if killing the beautiful and good thing between them was for _nothing_, she might as well be dead.

Beckett growled and unbuttoned her jeans, yanking them down her hips and taking her underwear with it.

"You know," Deleware said, his eyes on her. "That noise you just made. You do that when he goes down on you."

She closed her eyes and concentrated on the toilet, the water, the pinch in her bladder.

"My favorite part? The way your whole body rises up from the bed the very first time he touches you, when his fingers-"

Oh, _God. _"Shut up."

"You think he'll ever want to touch you again if you moan like that for me?"

Her eyes snapped open and she straightened up, didn't even bother with her pants, nothing. She stared him straight in the eye and she made her words very clear.

"You so much as touch me, and I will tear your dick off."

Deleware smiled.

* * *

><p>Castle's heart sank when he saw the caller ID on his phone. In the middle of the Office at nine at night, trying to get logistics together, this was the last thing he wanted to do, the last person he wanted to have to face.<p>

But he gestured for Mitchell to keep moving forward with the strike team, and he took the call, slipping outside into the hallway for the silence.

"Jim," he answered, his throat tight.

"Ah, shit," Jim sighed. "I thought so."

"Thought...?"

"It's been bothering me. It's been weighing on my mind all weekend, and I should have called you sooner. But I never thought I'd have to check up on her. Not now that she has you."

Castle felt that gaping bleakness opening its mouth for him again, that sense that nothing was ever going to be good again. "Check up on her."

"She gave me Sasha for the weekend and told me she was leaving to help you."

Castle dropped his chin into his chest and tried to keep from battering at the wall with his fist. Wouldn't help. "Technically," he grit out. "I guess she was."

"Is she there?"

"No," he admitted. "No, she-"

Whatever he'd meant to say wouldn't come, wouldn't get out past the chokehold of grief around his throat.

"If she's not there, where is she?" Jim asked. "She was headed to the airport but of course, she didn't tell me where. Is she in trouble?"

Castle's breath rattled in his lungs with every gulp of air. "I - she - yes. She went to Black. She went to Black because I..."

"She did what?" Jim's voice pitched deeper when he was grief-stricken and it was tenored so deeply now that Castle felt his knees weakening at the sound of his own fear echoed back to him. "She chased down _Black_?"

"Yes," he rasped. He'd promised to tell Jim Beckett the truth, to never keep him in the dark when it mattered. And now Kate had put him in this position, of having to tell her father that she was a captive of _his _father.

"Voluntarily?" Jim pressed. "Are you sure he didn't - no offense, son - but maybe he coerced her or she's being blackmailed or-"

"She went of her own free will. She took - she went," he finished. "But she thinks she's saving my life doing it."

"I don't understand," Jim blurted out. "That doesn't make sense."

"The regimen. It's my father's - his - when I got sick, they used the last of what we had to make me better and now it's... there've been some issues. And she went to get more."

"Oh, God."

Castle hunched inward, absorbing the wash of horror in Jim's voice. "I'm going to get her back, Jim. I promise. I'm not - I'm going to kill him if I have to, but he won't touch her. He won't touch her."

He wanted it to be true; he needed it to be true. His father liked fucking with him though and he couldn't - even as he made the promise, he was afraid that showing up in Tunisia at his father's summons was only inviting her execution.

"Son."

"Yeah?" he husked. He bent over at the waist, needing to breathe, needing not to throw up, needing.

"I..." Jim couldn't finish it, whatever it was, but Castle knew. He knew. God, he knew.

And this time the promise wouldn't come, hollow and tinny as it was; the words wouldn't leave his mouth.

"Call me the moment you... know anything," Jim said finally, his voice laid over with raw places. He ended the call and Castle squeezed his phone, hands braced on his knees, gulping air as he fought it, fought it.

The grief crushed him, ground him into nothing so that the tears were numb and his lungs were a vacuum. He heard himself as if from far off, the brutality of desperation pulverizing whatever effort he might have made to hold himself together.

And then he gripped the rubber case around his phone and hurtled it down the hallway, the sound of it bouncing doing nothing at all to relieve the terrible ache swallowing him whole. Castle drove his fist into the wall, again, again, beating his flesh into gristle against the cinder block, the bones grinding and crunching.

Fucking hell, God damn it, Beckett.

What was he fucking _planning_ for? A strike team wouldn't get within a hundred miles of the place without setting off alarms in Blacks' damn loyalist network. The CIA was riddled with spies - and not spies on Castle's side - and fuck, he was trying to be sensible about this?

No. Fuck, no.

It was time to go. He was getting her _back_ and then he was going to throttle her himself.

* * *

><p>Beckett haunted the hallways of the women's side of the villa, scoured through the rooms for possible weapons. Either Deleware or Maine followed her - depending on some schedule she couldn't fathom - and though the hours clawed along, she didn't have a better plan.<p>

Sometimes, though, _neither_ of them followed her.

No weapons, obviously, left lying around, though she discovered two austere cells with army cots in them, unmade and bare, and another canteen. The boxes of food had recent delivery dates on their sides, and the packaged, freeze-dried food wouldn't expire for another two years.

If the station keeper - Reynolds - was alive, he'd been maintaining his CIA credentials. If he wasn't, then Black had taken over very recently. Probably when she'd messaged him to say that Castle wouldn't meet with him.

This could be all her fault.

Beckett ignored the food and opened the drawers in the canteen, her heart stumbling when she saw the utensils. Spoons, ladles, spatulas, tongs-

Serving forks. Beckett grabbed the two large forks and gripped them against her thigh, darting a look towards the door. Deleware wasn't in sight - she'd chosen the canteen last, waiting for a time when he wasn't skulking nearby - and it had paid off.

She'd hide the forks somewhere that she could get to them later.

Beckett rifled carefully through the other three drawers, searching in silence, barely daring to breathe. It would be just her luck that Deleware came looking for her now, his gun held so deceptively casually, his perusing smile. She knew he was doing it to mess with her, knew he wanted her off-balanced so she'd be less of a threat.

How little he knew. Fuck with her head and she'd stab him with a knife. Or well - a serving fork.

She discovered two other utensils that might work if she needed them, and she slid the forks and butter knife and egg spoon into the front waistband of her jeans, let her shirt fall over them. The metal was cold against her skin, but she kept her abs tight and eased out of the canteen.

Beckett couldn't get near to the main door that led out onto the courtyard without Deleware intercepting her - she must be walking into view of security cameras. She needed to hide the utensils before she got that far, and maybe keep one of the knives and see if she might slip out into the courtyard itself.

A lip over a door was the first place. The second was one of the bare cots in a narrow room near the back. In another room on the far side, the windows had bars that hid one of the knives.

They hadn't assigned her 'quarters' though she figured she could always go back to the cot Black had cuffed her to - his old holding cell. She worked the maze of corridors and found the room again, but when she stepped inside, it occurred to her that the place would be wired for surveillance.

Kate ran her fingers over the bedframe anyway, searched for loose screws or broken metal cross pieces. She found a bent spring and worked at it with her fingers, her eyes sliding over the walls and corners of the room, wondering if she was being watched.

Sure enough, Deleware showed up. He cocked an eyebrow at her, staring at her ass as she bent over in her blood-stained jeans, but she ignored him.

"Stand up," he sighed.

She did and he came forward, slid his hand over her hip too innocently as he took the spring from her fingers.

"Naughty, naughty," he murmured.

She ignored him, kept her stomach in, her shirt loose over the last knife. Deleware gave her a cocky little smile and stepped out of the room again; she knew she was supposed to follow, so she did.

"No, this way," he called to her.

She turned after him, saw him guiding her towards the main door. He opened it with a theatrical flourish, the asshole smiling at her the whole time, and then he gestured her to go first.

His hand brushed her ass she went, and she was tempted to stick the knife in his ribs and twist. End it right here.

But she swallowed it down and took her first steps out into the brightly-lit courtyard.

"It's morning," she said dumbly.

"Barely," he sneered. "Move it, Beckett."

When she crossed the cream and blue patterned tile, she found Black waiting for her at a low table, breakfast laid out over its top.

* * *

><p>Castle zipped up the bag and shouldered it, slamming shut the door to his Range Rover and jogging towards the electric fence surrounding the private airfield. His phone buzzed angrily in his pocket but he was done listening to Mitchell try and stop him.<p>

No more planning, no more delays.

The sound of airplanes screaming overhead made his shoulders hunch, but he met the guard at the gate with his weapon.

The man froze.

"I know what you do here," Castle said quietly. "I know what this place is. And I need a plane."

"I... can't-" The man's gaze darted to the side and Castle slammed the butt of his weapon into the guard's face, heard the satisfying crunch of bone. The man slumped and Castle caught him, dragged him back inside the concrete guardhouse.

He pilfered the man's pockets, taking his side weapon and the automatic, grabbing the extra magazine and the cell phone. He pulled his backpack snug against his shoulders and slung the automatic over his shoulder, crept from the little concrete room.

The airfield was often used by drug cartels and crime bosses, but Castle hadn't personally flown out of here before. He didn't know the terrain or the air currents, but they had a plane that could make the overseas crossing.

The next commercial flight on Air France wasn't scheduled until nine, and he'd already wasted too much time delaying. The nine hour flight would put him in Tunis at six that night, but he'd discovered that jumping military convoys and cargo planes wouldn't get him there any faster.

So steal a plane it was.

Castle kept his finger on the trigger guard of the automatic, but unsheathed his knife from the strap around his thigh. He crept through the darkness towards the Quonset hut that served as a hangar, hoping to steer clear of patrols or late-night mechanics. When he arrived at the corrugated metal door, Castle avoided opening it in favor of scanning the terrain he'd just covered.

The control tower had a light on, of course, but looked to be operating as normal. He didn't see any more guards, and the Quonset hut at his back was silent. If he had to open the big door for the plane and start the engine inside the hangar, he'd lose the element of surprise. He needed a faster getaway.

Castle took a slow slide out from the shadows of the Quonset hut, daring to step into the light of the security lamp so he could see the far side of the airfield.

Ah, there was a plane on the last runway.

Castle took off at a jog across the tarmac.


	2. Chapter 2

**Close Encounters 14**

* * *

><p>"More eggs?" she muttered.<p>

"I'm feeding you," Black said. "Be grateful."

She wondered if Black didn't know about the boxes of food in the secondary canteen, or if he was purposefully trying to dredge up old memories to haunt her. Of course he knew about her time at Stone Farm - the rehab summaries had gone straight to his desk and Castle himself had been reporting to his father the whole time.

But the scrambled eggs? Surely a shot in the dark.

She put the plastic fork to the pile and scooped them into her mouth, scheming for a way to get into _his_ side of the villa compound. That was where the communication equipment would be, where the station keeper might be as well - if Reynolds was alive and holding out.

"I have a few things to tell you," Black said smoothly into her silence. "And you're going to listen. Be silent - for once in your life, Ms Beckett - and don't interrupt. This is information you want."

The regimen.

Kate put the fork down and grabbed the plastic cup of water, swallowed to keep her throat from drying up. Black was taking his time with the story, arranging his cloth napkin in his lap, adjusting his plate to a better angle. She kept her mouth shut because she knew this was a damn test as well, because if he really was going to tell her the truth about it, this was the time.

"You're going to have to convince him," Black said finally. When he lifted his head to look at her, the hatred in his eyes was so deep, so powerful, that it knocked the breath from her. He wasn't telling her this information because she'd come here for it; he was telling her because he recognized the force she had over his son's life, and he was going to use it for his own purposes.

But Black still hated that it was true.

"You're going to have to explain it to him, because I've found that my son won't exactly listen to me any longer. So here's what you have to know about the experiment."

The experiment. He meant _Castle_.

"In 1975, Richard's mother was unable to provide for him. I sent her money to have him attend a prestigious school in which a series of clandestine tests were given so that I might discern his possibility. When he proved himself, I installed Richard in a secure facility, giving him every opportunity for advancement in a profession that requires intelligence, honor, and sacrifice."

"You _injected_ him with an unproven, untested _cocktail_ and you're trying to tell me that it was some kind of charity? That you did him a _favor_?"

"Either you remain silent, or I stop."

Kate stabbed her fork into her eggs and shoved them into her mouth. Black took that as a sign and nodded.

"Very good. Your cooperation is noted. Although I've noticed that when your mouth is occupied, you are even more likely to be a detriment to my plans."

Kate choked on the eggs and coughed, grabbed her water to swallow it down. Fuck, he was playing with her still. Castle's old apartment - the surveillance - fine. Fine. She was fine. That was four years ago and yes, she'd been pretty screwed up and she often used sex to get what she wanted, but she and Castle were _beyond_ that.

"Part of his training included a series of experimental drugs which enhanced his physical prowess, sharpened his eyesight, and improved his hand-eye coordination. He took that round until he was ten years old, at which time, he moved to stage two."

Holy shit. Stage two at ten years old. She wanted to _strangle_ Black for what he'd done.

"Stage two proceeded through adolescence and provided his system the boost it needed to develop maturely and without defect."

He was talking, all these pretty and abstract words, but he was dancing around the real truth of it - he'd sacrificed his son as a lab rat.

"Suffice it to say - we took a natural propensity in Richard, and we made it better, stronger, faster. We made him the perfect-"

"Machine," she answered.

"And you broke it."

She shut her mouth again. She should've learned by now that every time she defended herself, every time she defended Castle, Black was going to twist it around.

"Stage three requires ongoing maintenance, Ms Beckett. I think you've seen that. We attempted to mass produce the wonderful results we saw in my son but it came to a disastrous end. The Marines enrolled in the program suffered from hallucinations and psychotic breaks, two went AWOL and massacred a whole Afghan village. One of those Marines is a man you know."

She froze, the answer rearing up darkly inside her.

"Coonan was never supposed to slip the net. But he did. Only right that my son should find him later."

Coonan. Black had _made_ Coonan into the vicious murderer for hire. The man who had _murdered_ her mother in an alley and left her like trash.

No, no, if that was true, then Black had made Castle as well. And whatever good and beautiful things in Castle couldn't be claimed by his father. Each man made his own choices.

But her mother-

"I suppose you could say I'm reaping the consequences for my overly enthusiastic behavior in regards to the project. We attempted to create ideal candidates and instead we let it get away from us. I made Coonan; Coonan made you. Ergo, I made you. Any fury or hatred I may feel towards you because of what you've done to my best creation - to my life's work - can only be laid at my own door."

She stiffened. "You have nothing to do with me. You didn't make me. You didn't make Castle. I am _more_ than my mother's death. And Castle is more than your regimen."

"And yet. Here you are."

* * *

><p>Castle heard shouts of alarm when he was only feet from the plane. It was in the process of being loaded, crates being conveyed into the belly even while the fuel truck lumbered away. The pilot was finishing his pre-flight check, and giving his co-pilot a thumbs-up.<p>

Castle grinned. Timing was everything.

He shot the pilot, the co-pilot, and the man working the controls of the conveyor belt in quick succession. The burly guy loading the plane screamed and fell out of the enclosed cab, bleeding heavily from his thigh. Might have gotten the femoral artery, but Castle didn't have time to regret his choice. The other two were down and no longer threats, but it might not be that way for long.

The boxes were about hip high, but Castle lunged for the conveyor belt and vaulted over the cargo as it came down. He heard the bullet before he saw the shooter, had to drop behind a box for cover. The man was in the cargo hold, taking terrible aim, but Castle didn't have much time. Already he was closing too fast as the conveyor belt dragged him back up to the plane.

Castle jumped up in between poorly-aimed potshots, and he flung his knife towards the figure. The man dropped with a cry, and Castle managed to run the gauntlet of the last few boxes and climb up into the cargo hold. He kicked the shooter over with his boot and gripped the handle of his Army-issue knife, ripped it from the man's chest.

The man screamed and Castle shoved him out of the cargo hold. He quickly unhooked the conveyor from the lip of the door, lost precious time forcing it away from the edge of the plane. Close enough. It'd have to do.

Already he heard more shouts, the sounds of the men dying on the ground, and Castle gripped the two boxes that had already been loaded and he heaved them over the side. At least they had their cargo; he hoped it would stall their search for the plane. Maybe they'd even lose interest.

Right.

He gripped the heavy cargo door and slammed it into place, spun the wheel to seal the lock. The cargo hold was dark now, the emergency lighting a pale red, and Castle had to dig his flashlight out of his backpack, repacking the gun back inside. He kept the knife close and turned on the flashlight, started navigating his way up towards the cockpit.

The plane was all cargo, a long-barreled body with netting that divided the sections, and a door at one end that led to the cockpit. Castle paused when he got to the door, but there was nothing for it. He put his hand into the metal clasp and unlatched the divider, his knife at the ready.

Cockpit was empty.

He backtracked for the side crew door and spun the wheel to lock it, then made his way into the cockpit once more. He was jolted by the sheer number of unfamiliar dials, but he'd flown this baby before - or one similar - and he could do it again. No matter how fancy they'd made it.

* * *

><p>The vibration startled her more than it should have, but Black merely slipped two fingers inside his breast shirt pocket and withdrew a phone. He glanced at it and then rose from the table in the courtyard.<p>

"Stay," he said.

Like hell.

Beckett jumped up from the table and followed him around to the other side of the yard, past the fountain and through an archway. Black turned at a door and cast a baleful look at her.

He was as tall and broad as Castle, and sometimes it shook her just how much she instinctively responded to him as if he were familiar.

He was not familiar; he was _not_ family. She didn't know him - she had no idea what he'd do when she pushed him past the point of no return.

She stepped back, slowly.

"You were telling me important information. So that I'll convince Castle to stay on the regimen. You can't leave now."

Black snapped his fingers and gestured at someone down the open corridor. Kate turned her head and saw Deleware step out of the shadows; she should have known the mercenary would have been close by.

"You," Black snapped. "Watch her."

Whatever illusions she'd held about being free to go were quickly disappearing. Deleware sauntered close and when he was within range, Black opened the green baize door that led to the operations side of the listening station and disappeared inside.

Beckett stood her ground, made Deleware come to her. The man looked at her like meat, but he _hadn't_ in the boat; he'd been coldly efficient. It made her suspicious of his motives now, and she had decided he was the one to push.

"Black told me you weren't supposed to have touched me," she said, lifting her chin. She remembered the twisted and bitter loyalty that Dr Saber had displayed for Black. "You weren't supposed to have shot me."

"You weren't supposed to kick me in the nuts," he growled, a flash of temper she hadn't seen before.

She smothered the smile and instead plucked at her t-shirt. "I look like I've been shot. Blood everywhere. You think Black is going to be pleased with Castle's reaction when he sees me?"

Deleware's eyes flickered over her ripped jeans, the soaked collar of her shirt; she hadn't washed up when she'd gone to the bathroom, had left the wound to scab over on its own since she didn't have any first aid.

"Remember when Cole Maddox shot me?" she said quietly. "You sat in on that interrogation. Ryan told me you were there. You know what happens to Castle when something happens to me."

"Damn it," Deleware swore, jaw clenched.

"I just need some soap and towels. Clean clothes would be ideal, but I won't hold out for those," she said quickly, going in for the kill. "But there's no soap on that side of the place. I've been looking."

His teeth flashed with his smile. "I've been watching you look."

"Then you know as well as I do that the bathroom doesn't even have a shower curtain, there aren't any towels, and you can forget shampoo or soap."

"You're not getting a shower curtain."

"You're not getting another free show," she hissed. "Soap. Towels. Some kind of curtain."

His eyes diverted to the baize door, the ornate scrollwork of the door frame that marked it as the portal to the master's den. "Shit," he muttered. "Fine. You stay in front of me. You turn when I say turn. I'd fucking blindfold you, but I'm afraid you'd like that too much."

"Lame," she sneered. "You've seen hours of video footage. You know my sexual fantasies, how I moan, how he touches me. And that's the best you can come up with?"

"Fuck you," Deleware growled. "Put your face to the wall, hands up. I've got to unlock it."

Kate did as he said, pressing her cheek against the cool adobe of the court yard wall. Under the archway of the corridor, they were in chilled shadows. She could see the steady fall of water in the fountain's basin, the flickering shade of the orange tree as a breeze disturbed its leaves.

"Turn around," Deleware commanded.

She did and saw the green baize door was open, Del standing just inside and cautiously glancing down the hall. It was obvious that she wasn't supposed to be entering into the functioning guts of the listening station. But Black's rebuke of Deleware's thoughtless treatment of her was a dark mark on his otherwise perfect record, and he wanted her to stop looking like he'd shot her.

She had to remember that Deleware had been Black's right hand man for at least the last two years, maybe longer. She couldn't remember when the agent had left, but it had been long before Castle had arrested his father and sent him here to Tunisia.

Deleware wanted to remain in Black's good graces, the same way Saber had spewed vitriol at falling out of them. She didn't want to admit it, but Agent Black inspired loyalty and devotion that bordered on obsessive.

No wonder he demanded it from his son.

Deleware called out directions in a quiet voice, staying at her back with the gun, and she memorized every turn, went slowly because she needed a reason to _stay_ over here. This was where Black was running his rebellion, and she wanted to know who and how many before Castle got here.

The layout was similar, but much more richly appointed. Oriental runners lined the narrow hallways, doors were elaborately carved rather than plain, electricity had been installed lovingly rather than slapdash, and so the lights were ensconced in the walls and burned golden and amber. She could sense the size of the place, but she was seeing mostly storage rooms and piles of furniture.

Black had apparently pushed out everything lovely and handsome, shoved the gorgeous furniture and accoutrements into these side rooms. She bet that wherever he had set up his command post there was nothing but a few tables, a chair only for himself, and lots of computers.

Of course, Deleware wasn't taking her anywhere near there.

And he was avoiding whoever else might be with them. She was beginning to see that they were in living quarters, probably the sultan's sons' rooms at one time, and then she realized that she'd gone too far.

"Beckett," Deleware snapped. She held up her hands in surrender and turned back around; he was gesturing with his chin for her to open the door on her right. "Get in the damn bathroom."

She'd rattled him hard, hadn't she? Talking about what Castle might do when he saw her. She opened the bathroom door and stepped onto the tiles, surprised at the humid touch of the air and the full bath in the corner.

Oh, now she understood. They must be right over a natural hot springs. The former occupants had used it to create a royal bathing chamber, and the tub was really a large wading pool with steaming water constantly bubbling up from the earth.

"Towels, Beckett. And soap."

She ignored the delicious heat of the steaming water and slowly made her way to the armoire set against one wall. It looked like the space had held other items, but Black had gotten here as well. Or else, the CIA had stripped it of its clutter.

She opened the right hand door and saw clean linens and towels, grabbed a bedsheet thinking to use it as a shower curtain.

And then Deleware's phone vibrated, echoing off the tile and making them both jump. He cursed and checked his message, cursed again with a kick of his foot into the tiled wall. She winced when she heard the old tile crack, sighed when Deleware glared at her.

"You," he gritted out. "You stay here. I'll be back for you."

And then he locked her inside the bathroom.

* * *

><p>The trick would be air space.<p>

He'd had to run through the pre-flight check pretty fast - too fast for comfort - and then start the engines while he ducked back outside and removed the blocks from the wheels. The co-pilot had been missing from the group of the wounded outside, but Castle had made his way back into the cockpit without any further trouble. With the engines going, he'd rushed through the last of the pre-flight checks and went ahead and taxied down the runway.

He'd taken a few bullets on lift-off, but all of his gauges had remained correct; everything had looked fine. He hoped the landing gear hadn't been hit, but he'd deal with that later.

Now it was about air space.

Agent Castle had done this before; it wasn't a new thing - flying a black ops cargo plane into foreign air space under the radar and off the radio frequencies. But he usually had the entire force and sway of the CIA behind him.

This time, he did not.

Add to that, he was flying a known smuggler's plane deep into a region that routinely shot down rival cartel's assets. Tunisia was more ideal because of its location on the Mediterranean, but he couldn't stick to international waters the whole way.

At some point, he'd have to finagle his way through foreign and therefore hostile territory.

His flight over the Atlantic was smooth and without incident. He used the time to familiarize himself with the bells and whistles installed on this cargo jet. It wasn't a Boeing Dreamlifter or anything, but it was a Lockheed L-100 Hercules, an expensive beauty that he'd had to take a few times before on a run between Air Force bases in Europe.

But they'd stopped making the Hercules in the early nineties, so whatever technology had been in existence then - that was what he'd been prepared for. He had a handle on the old aircraft, but this one had modifications that seemed purposefully complicated. After a few hours of messing around with various instruments, he realized that it was outfitted for stealth - to the best of its cargo-heavy ability. Anti-radar and satellite screens, dampeners and white noise makers, other forms of camouflage for the electromagnetic spectrum.

Some of it was crap, some of it might work. The plane was metal though, and Castle wasn't going to bet on the rest of it.

And of course, when he set his speed and angle of approach for a low flight between Morocco and Portugal, an arrow through the Strait of Gibraltar, it was Lisbon that picked him up first with Marrakesh second. Europe was always much stricter than Africa.

He took the call from Marrakesh, knowing he had contacts in that government that might work in his favor too.

He answered the radio center's call sign with his own - the one on the GPS system he'd hastily untethered to the ID kit so that the smugglers couldn't track him. Marrakesh asked for his flight plan and he made up his official stuff as he went along.

He was already being asked to cease and desist when suddenly the radio center asked him to standby. Castle tensed his hand on the yoke, checked the primary display and his altitude obsessively again.

"Hercules, I have Agent Mitchell for you. I'm switching this channel to secure. Please dial up."

Fuck. But Castle did so, setting his radio frequency for one of the CIA's secure channels. It was mostly _not_ secure, but it would be better than nothing.

"Castle."

"Mitchell," he sighed.

"I'm not going to ask you to turn around."

"Good, because I'm not turning around."

"I've cleared your flight plan through Tunis."

"I'm landing on the island," he said briskly.

"I figured. I just want you to know that search and rescue is still in place. It doesn't have to be this way."

"It does," he said. "I can't wait - she can't wait for us to figure out all the contingencies. He tried to kill her, Mitch. He wants her dead." _And I'm the one who has to tell her father when search and rescue goes wrong._

"Castle, you don't know that he won't kill her the moment you walk into his trap."

"I won't let him."

"He'll know you're coming. He'll have people to meet you."

"I'm prepared for that," Castle said grimly.

"You and Beckett - shit - you guys are going to kill yourselves defending each other."

"No way I'd rather go."

"Fine. But I'm still working the plan. You do what you have to do. But be ready for the hazing you're gonna get from Mason when he finds out you're basically doing the exact same thing he did in Warsaw."

"He wasn't married to her."

"He is now."

Castle grunted but Mitchell was already signing off. The radio center sent him course headings with only a modicum of reluctance, and then Castle was sliding his cargo jet through Moroccan airspace.

In the back of his mind, he was already adjusting the approach to his mission based on the knowledge that Mitchell and his strike team - plus the other elements - were going to be in place when he needed them.

He might have to do some fast talking to save both their lives, he might have to stall, but at least Beckett would have him and he'd have her.

* * *

><p>Beckett couldn't believe Deleware had left her alone in here.<p>

She stood stunned for all of two seconds and then she attacked the door knob, studying the old fashioned warded lock with a critical eye. It'd take a skeleton key to turn and she wasn't sure she had the necessary tools inside the bathroom with her, but she had to try.

Kate went back to the richly-detailed armoire against one wall of the tiled bathroom, opened up both sides.

She struck gold. Holy shit, Deleware hadn't even looked through the place or else he'd have known all this was here. Ornate decorative pieces that had apparently been scattered throughout the bathroom and sleeping rooms had been shoved onto these shelves on the left hand side, filigree and Fabergé, cloisonné and Ottoman relics. She reached inside and pulled down the wire figurine of a gazelle, her heart racing at the attention to detail in the finely-crafted antlers.

Each ridge of antler was a separate piece of wire wrapping around what felt like real ivory, and she managed to get a fingernail under the edge of one piece. She didn't have the strength to unwind it, but she pressed the sharp metal spike to the lip of the heavy wooden shelf, and she forced it.

When the wire began to bend back, Beckett let out a grunt of triumph, had to put her full force behind it to make it work. Sweat broke out on her forehead and burned in the graze on her cheek and ear, made the wound throb with the pounding of her pulse. She had to rotate the gazelle and push at the wire with the shelf, using both hands to unwind more and more of the decoration.

She managed to get a long enough piece of heavy wire from around the antler that it would work in the lock. Dizzy with the effort, she released her grip, stumbled backwards. She had to take a second to breathe, something giddy and wonderful in the idea of _doing_ something rather than just being led around, submissive captive.

Beckett squatted down in front of the lock and used the gazelle figurine to pick its old tumblers, moving carefully to get a feel for it. She had been picking locks since she was in the Police Academy, and often enough it'd been this type of warded lock she had come into contact with in New York.

The sweat dried sticky on her temples and her face had begun to hurt once more, but she almost had it. She tried to keep an ear out for Deleware returning down the hall, but in all honesty, she couldn't care less if he found her. What could he do? She knew now where the line lay, and his fear and subservience to Black wouldn't let him touch her.

At least not where it showed. She didn't _think_ he'd touch her like that, but there had been moments on the boat, in the bathroom, when she hadn't been sure.

The lock scraped and twisted and she yelped, grinning stupidly to herself as she got the door open. She kept the gazelle, thinking it would be useful as a weapon with its long, sharp antlers, and she slipped out into the hall.

It wasn't quiet, but Beckett couldn't pinpoint where the noise was coming from or what it was. Maybe feet on the flagstones of the hallway, or perhaps a large group of men moving in the courtyard, but either way, she didn't know how long she might have here. So she picked a direction - north - and followed the long line of formerly furnished rooms away from where Deleware had led her inside.

She kept a careful map in her head, building it hallway by hallway, piecing together the layout as she explored. This section was obviously living quarters, and based on the number of messy beds and rucksacks, she was guessing about six men were housed here with Black. She was assuming that Castle's father wouldn't mix with his mercenaries, and that he had his own appointment in another section - probably wherever the communications equipment was, just in case there was mutiny in the ranks.

Mutiny in the ranks. It gave her an idea. What if the station keeper had done his job faithfully but one of the men assigned to him had overthrown his careful procedures? She couldn't discount the kid - she remember what he'd been like that night in Rome. Castle had bought him dinner at their favorite place and they'd talked for a long time. Reynolds. She'd been carefully avoiding thinking of him - the boy built like a cross country runner and with the pink cheeks and honest green eyes of a heart throb.

Reynolds. They weren't fast friends or anything, and he was new and fresh to the region, but she didn't want him to have been the one to let Black out of his cage.

She tried every door she came to, opening carefully into rooms and more bathrooms and longer hallways. She found three small boot knives in the men's bags and she squirreled one away in her shoe, but she knew that she'd have to hide it somewhere else. The dinner knife she threw into what looked like a trash room, burying it under piles of waste paper, the switchblade rubbing hard into the sole of her foot.

No guns were left lying around, no phones, no way to reach the outside world. She didn't find the door leading out of the compound either, and she guessed it would be closer to the communication area, as well as the armory.

Beckett had just turned a corner on what looked to be interrogation rooms when a hand reached out and grabbed her, yanked her hard into a sweating, fierce chest. She grunted as her teeth caught her tongue, winced when the pounding in her head doubled.

Deleware. "What the _hell_ do you think you're doing?" His fingers were bruising and he dragged her down the hall and ducked inside a room that looked blank and unused. "Fuck."

"I'm exploring," she said archly, wrenching her arm out of his grip. Or so she thought. Deleware snarled and held on, twisting her wrist up and behind her back. She gasped as the pain blossomed and joined with the ache in her cheek, but she brought her knee up and managed to nail him in the thigh.

He grunted and dodged, her jab missing his crotch, and he brought her back against his chest "If Black weren't here, I'd beat you senseless for that."

"Like Black cares," she muttered.

"Not about you, no. But you know as well as I do that we're walking a thin line with Castle. Gotta prove we can be trusted," he sneered. It sounded like Deleware was adamantly against whatever plan Black had concocted, that he would like nothing better than to dump her body in the Mediterranean. "Fucking hell, I wish I could put a bullet in your damn husband. This thing is sick and twisted and Black can't see clear of it."

"Either break my arm already or let me go, you fucking brute."

Deleware snarled and shoved her through the doorway and back out into the hall, but he didn't let go of her arm. She felt her knees trying to give way at the pain, but she resolutely walked ahead of him, not giving him any reason to push.

"We've got a visitor arriving soon and I've got to go and meet him. So I'm taking you back across, Kate, and you're going to stay there if you want to see your husband alive."

Her husband was the visitor.

"You can't hurt him," she snarled. Deleware couldn't even _touch_ Castle.

"Oh, I can do plenty of hurt."


	3. Chapter 3

**Close Encounters 14**

* * *

><p>When the Lockheed Hercules landed on the strip just outside the listening station on the island off Tunisia, there was a party of armed men waiting for him.<p>

No Beckett.

To be expected, but it twisted at something brittle in his chest.

He powered down the engines and sat in the cockpit for a heartbeat too long, making them nervous, making them restless, and then he unbelted himself from the seat and moved to the door. He knew he wouldn't be allowed the automatic or his Sig, but the knife would stay, regardless. He hid the rest of his weapons in the cargo area of the plane and then lowered the cargo door.

Gun barrels rose to meet him.

And then _Deleware_ stepped out of the group, faced him with a weapon at rest against his thigh. Castle paused on the ramp in a moment's stunned surprise, and Deleware gave him a cocky, soul-bitter grin. Deleware.

"Richard."

"Del," he said smoothly, as if the sight of the former analyst was a given. "New gig?"

"Better pay. Less flak." He lifted one shoulder and Castle saw in the easy grace and panther-like movements that the man had been hiding his true nature all those years. Since Eastman had been desked, Deleware had been on his support team, working in tandem with Mark as his handler on missions. All those years.

"Doubt working for dear old Dad means less flak," Castle said, a tilt of his head indicating _what now_?

Deleware didn't answer, but Castle could tell the comment rankled him; instead of acting on it though, he gestured for Castle to step ahead of him towards the end of the landing strip. "Get in the Jeep."

"Sir, yes, sir," Castle said ironically. He ambled towards Del though, not the Jeep, and stopped only a few feet away. "Don't you want to check me for guns?"

"Are you stupid enough to try to bring anything other than that Bowie knife?" Deleware answered.

Well, that told Castle how observant his enemy was. He'd seen the knife, but he'd also noted that Castle hadn't hidden anything else. He wished he had, just to show him up, but instead he merely gave the man a nod of his head in salute and headed for the Jeep.

"On me," Del said quietly to the group and their precision might not have been ideal, but their response was uniform. Castle figured them for mercenaries unused to Deleware in command - or Black, for that matter - but being paid well for it. He wondered where Reynolds might be, the station keeper he'd only managed to talk with twice before nothing came back again - and he wondered what they'd done to Beckett.

He knew it showed his hand to ask after her, and he bit it back, swallowed down the press of it in his throat. "So how long have you been one of Black's adorable minions?"

"Fuck you," Deleware snarled. But the man got control of himself quickly again, a shake of his head and a faster pace towards the Jeep, and Castle stayed quiet, thinking on that one, until he was guided into the backseat. Deleware had another man drive and sat himself beside Castle, his weapon steady.

They weren't here to kill him, obviously, and Deleware's response was so laced with hatred that Castle knew he must be holding himself back. Which meant his father wanted him alive. He didn't know what it meant for Beckett.

Needling Deleware until he burst out with information seemed the best route. "So my father's service is where you want to be? All those years in the CIA down the drain-"

"All those years?" Deleware sneered. "I was always in the know, and you just did whatever the hell he told you to. I told him everything - he had you so well pinned down, so under his thumb-"

"And you weren't? Good little lapdog."

"Fuck you," Deleware said easily. "You abandoned your training to fuck the first woman who told you that you were special, and _I _stayed loyal. I was the one who did what he asked without complaint; I've _been the one_. So shut the hell up."

"You sound sensitive there, Del. What's wrong? Prodigal sun returns and you've got to butcher your precious fatted calf?"

Deleware seemed to sense at that moment all that he'd let loose and his face flared bright in anger, a deep and sinister glee crawling behind his eyes. "If the fatted calf is your wife, then I'm first in line, Castle. I'd gut her while I fucked her - she seems to enjoy the pain anyway. All those nights in your CIA apartment."

Everything in him screamed to do the gutting first, himself - his knife in Deleware's belly and his intestines spilled across his own shoes.

But he breathed instead. He breathed and he contented himself with letting the man see his furious and cold and lethal rage in his eyes.

Beckett. He had to get to Beckett first.

But the moment Beckett was in sight, then he'd start gutting.

* * *

><p>It was Deleware who brought Castle through the Listening Station. At gunpoint. They came through the long series of tunnels and into the open court yard where the fountain bubbled and shushed, and though she sat on the edge of its stone wall in the bright beam of the sun, she was cold.<p>

Black had come for her in the women's section and staged this nice little scene, and she suddenly and desperately wished she'd been given the chance to clean up her face, put on clothes that didn't look like she'd been shot.

When Beckett stood and saw the furious mask of his face, her heart dropped. And then his eyes caught the ragged line of her ear and the rage boiled up in his voice.

"You said you weren't _hurt_," he hissed, taking two steps towards her.

"I said," she croaked, feeling small before him. "I said Black hadn't hurt me. And he hasn't. Didn't. It wasn't him; it was-" For a moment, she paused and saw the man behind her husband, his cruelty and his dangerous, twisted loyalty to Black. And then she spoke his name and damned him. "It was Deleware."

Something inhuman fell over Castle. He twisted in a move so fast she barely followed, a flash of sunlight against a blade. His arm arced upward and the knife slashed Deleware from ear to ear, the terrible bubble of his scream coming through his throat with the rush of pulsing blood.

The man fell. Castle went very still in the mess and then he turned slowly back to where she and Black stood. She stared at the blood, the ripped open throat, the dark and dead eyes, and saw the jagged-edged blade in Castle's left hand.

The Army-issue, Special Forces knife. The same kind that had killed her mother.

Kate's stomach heaved and she lifted her chin to keep from vomiting, swallowed it down fiercely, wave after wave, the smell of blood in the air.

"Kate."

She couldn't look at him. Couldn't look.

"It wasn't my doing," Black said in the middle of this. "You told me not to touch touch her - that was the deal."

"You _went back _on our deal. You weren't supposed to be anywhere near her and yet I _found you in Russia_. You had pictures of her. That mission. That mission _did this._"

"She's alive, isn't she? I didn't break our deal. I merely creatively expressed it."

Castle growled, an animal sound that brought to mind caves and gristle. He called her name in a voice that was dark. "Kate. I need you over here."

"I could have killed her when she arrived. I could have put a bullet in her head and saved myself a lot of time and effort and - frankly - saved you as well."

"Kate," Castle said again, demand riding through his voice. "On my side."

Black didn't offer challenge though she knew he had a gun on him as well. Kate stepped past the fountain and edged her way towards Castle. He'd sheathed the knife in its harness at his thigh, but he had Deleware's gun in his hand. He gripped her by the elbow and positioned her behind him, but she knew it was already too late.

He'd murdered Deleware because she'd _named_ him.

She pressed her cheek to Castle's shoulder blade and felt him flinch, the revulsion in his skin that he couldn't hide from her. So she stepped back. Stepped away. Away. She'd keep away until he could-

The tile floor of the courtyard was slick and gritty with blood. Deleware's body was crumpled at her left, Castle not even looking at it. The knife had gone, disappeared, but the image remained.

"Well, Richard. What a display. Though your wife did tell me she had to inject you with an infusion of my serum last December. Accounts for the reflexes. And the brutality."

"Fuck you."

"No, actually," Black said calmly. "You're the one fucked."

Kate felt the cold blade first, and then she was yanked off her feet by the fierce grip of a man behind her, the press of the knife to the wound in her ear and the wrenching of her shoulders as he dragged her away from Castle.

Her husband spun around, the weapon coming up, and Kate felt the man's cheek against hers, his breath across her lips, the hunched and powerful body behind hers. He bent her back and she grunted; the knife slipped down to flay her neck.

"_Stop_." Castle growled it, the power deadly but leashed.

"Do I have your attention, Richard?"

Castle turned his head to his father and the knife eased only slightly, the new wound shallow but stinging.

"Good," Black said, his eyes gleaming triumphant. "Now it's time for us to make a new deal."

* * *

><p>A new deal?<p>

Kate felt the knife bite into her ear and she ground her teeth down into her tongue to keep from making a noise and distracting Castle with her pain. She caught the triumph in Black's face and panic crawled through her.

She still had the knife in her shoe but no way to get to it. Deleware had taken the gazelle; Deleware was dead at their feet. And Black was holding her ransom.

"What deal?" Castle said, all too calmly. He gave her a quick look that belied his voice - the panic was clawing at him as well.

"You for her," Black said simply.

She couldn't comprehend; the words made no sense. "You'd kill him?" she burst out.

"I'd kill you," Black said without hesitation. "But if he comes to me now, willingly, you get to leave here. With your own life."

She panicked. "_No-"_

"Kate."

"What do you say, Richard? Come back to me, back to how it was before her, and she lives. Simple as that."

"NO," she shouted, wrenching in the man's hold and choking at his grip on her neck. "No, that was _not the deal_. You said that if he came here and you talked then he gets the regimen, all of it that he needs to live. _Damn_ you_._"

"Richard. You come back to the life you were meant to live, and she gets to go back to hers. Up to you."

"I don't want that life. Castle. No. Don't." Kate threw herself against the man's grip but he pressed the point of the blade deep into the wound at her ear. She groaned, the violence of that agony making her vision white out.

"You can't possibly think," Castle said slowly, "that I'd be worth anything to you without her."

"You underestimate the power of the regimen. The power of what I've _made_ you_. _In time, you'll forget her."

"And we do what? Go back to the CIA one big happy family? It won't happen."

"Obviously not that - not after she's ruined everything. But I have my own Company now. As you can see."

Castle seemed to be considering it - saving her life by going back to him.

"No, no, no," Kate moaned. "Castle, no. That's not how it's supposed to go." She growled at the man holding her and struggled to get clear of the knife. "Black. You son of a bitch; he _needs_ this. You can't hold it over his head."

"He does need this." But Black's eyes were on his son's. "By now, you'll have noticed the changes. What's happening to your body without the proper maintenance. Your doctors will have told you what happens next. The way your red blood cells will grow like a cancer if left unstable, how they'll cling to your lipoproteins and misshape them as well. Then those proteins will infect the rest of your system, eat away at your body - make your brain like swiss cheese."

"What?" Beckett froze. "What are you - no. Castle." But Castle wouldn't look at her either. "Castle." Was that true? Black hadn't told her that. Had Castle's tests said that?

"I won't let you do anything to her," Castle said.

"You'd be surprised what you don't have control over. Come with me, come back to me, son, and it will be as it's always been meant to be. _You_ will be what you were created to be."

A machine. The life that had made him so dead inside, so automatic and without feeling - except in that little boy heart of him. Castle couldn't do that again; she couldn't live with herself if he went back to that. Black was worse than death.

"And you'll leave her alone?"

"No, Castle, no. Baby, please don't agree to this-"

"What do I care about her? You're the one I want."

"Okay," Castle said. "But she gets off-"

"_No_," she yelled, jerking in the man's arms and flinging herself into the knife. The pain caught her breath but also made both men look at her. "No. You can't - I will _not _let you use me to control him."

"Too late."

"This is his _life_. This isn't a damn game," she yelled, struggling harder so that the man behind her wrapped one of his legs around hers to pin her down. "This isn't some chess move and I won't be your pawn-"

"Would you please be quiet for once?" Black said wearily, his eyes flicking away from her. "Richard. What do you say?"

No. No, Castle could _not _go back to him. They were supposed to have a _life_.

"She gets off the island first. You don't-"

"No," she yelled at them. "I'll kill myself before I let you take him. You bastard - you can't do that to him again. I'm taking myself _off the board._"

Beckett gripped the man's knife hand and this time she lunged into the blade.

* * *

><p>Castle leaped.<p>

His hand wrapped around the blade and drew it away from her, breaking the mercenary's wrist. Castle's elbow came up and bashed the man in the face even as the merc shouted in pain. Kate lurched, caught in between them, and he twisted the knife by the blade even as it cut deep into his flesh. He ripped it from the man's fingers without another thought.

As the mercenary stumbled, Castle wound his other arm around the man's neck, gripped his chin, and jerked. The spine snapped and the man crumpled and then Castle's arms were filled with a wild, desperate Beckett.

He dropped the knife and squeezed his hand into a fist, wrapped both arms around her and pressed her hard against him to keep her from doing anything else so stupid. So fucking, oh _God_, what the hell was she doing to him? "Apples, apples, Kate. Apples."

She was keening something in his ear, her body moving like she was trying to climb him, and he clutched her harder, pulse throbbing in his hand.

"Bleeding. You're bleeding. Castle-"

He gripped her shirt in his fist so that his blood soaked through her already blood-soaked collar. She writhed and he grappled her against him tighter. "Don't you dare, don't you dare do that to me. That is a hard fucking limit, Kate Beckett."

"You can't give yourself to him, you can't - you can't-"

"While this is touching," his father interrupted. "It doesn't change anything."

"You can't," she was begging him. "You can't."

"Would you _trust_ me?" he hissed in her ear, so furious with her that his fist wouldn't release her shirt. "You think I'd leave you for _any_ reason?"

"Please don't go back to him-"

"Richard," his father cut through. "I need your answer. She might not have a knife to her neck, but you know I can get to her anywhere."

He gripped the back of Kate's neck with his still bleeding fist and turned around to his father. "You leave her alone... then you have me."

"_No_," she cried out, but he had a grip on her she couldn't possibly break.

He turned back to Kate and pressed his mouth to her ear, his voice harsh with the breaking. "This is not the way. Not. The. Way."

* * *

><p>"Good," his father said again, rubbing a hand over the crooked side of his face. "Very good. You're making the right choice here. She's obviously an albatross around your neck."<p>

"You damn-"

Castle grunted and held her tighter, could barely keep her from running her mouth and ruining everything. His father looked so royally pissed about Kate's panic attack that he might do something regardless of the 'deal.'

"Give me a minute," Castle said finally, having to talk over Kate's furious demands. "Let me get cleaned up, then we'll hammer out the conditions."

"Conditions? No."

"_Yes._ You want me? Then it's under my own rules. One of which - the regimen. I control the regimen - not you."

Kate went still, gasping for breaths that seemed less and less likely to come. He couldn't spare her a glance without arousing his father's suspicion, though he knew Black couldn't possibly think he'd throw her over so fast.

"The regimen. With your hand shredded by that knife, you need it now more than ever. Though she's a stupid little fool. You should have let her do it."

At his back, Kate surged again, and he had to struggle to keep her away. He could see that it amused his father to piss her off, and also that Black was watching _his_ reactions. Testing him.

"It's already better," he said, though it pulsed hotly. He ignored the needling remarks from his father and pushed on. "Though I need to field dress it and get..."

"Get her under control. Yes. Please do." His father flicked a look Kate's direction and it took everything in him not to murder the bastard right there. "She'll be leaving soon."

"You make the call first," Castle said, pushing Kate behind him again as she lunged for his father. "You make the call for the regimen and you get it here."

"You _promised_-" Kate yelled, some of her resistance flaring up again.

"Would you please do something about her?"

"Don't look at her," Castle flared. "You look at me. You talk to _me._ Nothing between us ever comes to her again, you understand me?"

"You're bleeding," his father said dispassionately. "Quite a lot. You do realize that if you'd been on the regimen like you were supposed to, none of this would have happened?"

"Don't play around with me," Castle growled. "I'm bleeding all over your courtyard here and I want you to make the damn call."

"Fine. Yes. I'll put out the word. I have a man waiting and he'll bring it straight up." His father's face was no longer quite as twisted as it had been; his eyes were narrowed and intent on Castle's. "You need me for that regimen. You'll see. When you take it... you'll see what it did for you, what it can do again."

Castle kept his mouth clamped shut, tightly shut, and he forced Kate away from his father. "Which door?" he said to her. "Give me directions here, Beckett."

But Kate was struggling at his hand and he let her pry his fingers apart, ignored her moan as she saw the wound. Black was waving him away, his phone already up to his ear, and so Castle gripped Kate's chin and forced her eyes to his.

"Beckett. Which door, before he fucking chooses for us. I need a moment alone with you."

Her eyes froze and then darted to the baize green door just to his right. He kept his gaze on Black for as long as he could manage, and then he was shoving Kate through the ornate wooden frame.

The door closed and shut out the light and suddenly, Kate was pressing her palm to his bloodied one and squeezing it against her chest. "Castle," she croaked.

"You and I are going to _talk_," he snapped. "But first, where's a damn bathroom?"

She trembled one moment and then stood up straighter, like his fury was something she could handle - just not his bleeding. "There. Past two corridors and to the left."

With his hand still pressed to hers - burning and stinging with the knife wound - Castle jerked her down the hallway after him.

* * *

><p>"What the hell did you think you were doing?" he hissed, reaching out and slamming the door shut to the bathroom.<p>

She was barely holding herself together; the image of the knife and the blood played like a movie in her head. But instead of cowering, it made her angry. "I was saving your life. Nothing you can say will make me feel guilty for that."

"Oh, yeah?" he growled. "Saving my life includes _throwing yourself at a knife_?"

"It was a damn stalemate and I had to do something."

"You do not - you do not _ever_ get to do that."

"It worked," she hissed. "But then you went ahead and agreed with him. What the hell-"

"Because you were fucking trying to _kill yourself_. That isn't acceptable, Beckett. I understand that you get panic attacks and-"

"I didn't _panic_," she hissed. "You self-righteous bastard. You are _throwing your life away_."

"And what in the name of all that is holy did you think you were doing?" he roared. "You do not get to fucking lunge at knives and then lecture me about agreeing to go back to him."

"You think I'm not dead either way?" she yelled back. "Do you think I could live with myself if I _trapped_ you with him? I was the _bait_, damn it, and I played right into it."

But his face was still livid and he ignored that, yelling back at her like her whole heart wasn't shredded to nothing. "Just because the situation is shitty does not mean you get to _quit _by lunging at a knife. Take yourself off the _board_? You don't get to do that to me. You came here; you _did_ this, and now these are the damn consequences. And you better fucking live with it because if you _die_, then everything is worthless."

"It already is. You can't do this. I won't let you bully me into letting you walk straight back to him. You are worth more than this_. _If I have to slit my own throat to get you to see that, then I fucking will_._"

"And if you're pregnant? You plan on doing this selfish shit to my kid?"

She stumbled, ice water in her veins that froze her anger.

"You just didn't think, Beckett. You didn't even stop to _question_ it. There were other ways to do this."

"There was no other way," she rasped, her voice coming up into a yell. "You wouldn't even listen to me. You shut me down. And I'm not pregnant. I'm not. I'd have known - I'd know."

"You have no fucking clue. I was stalling for time, Kate. I was _stalling for time_. But you - you - _you_. Fuck. Fuck, you're going to _kill me_. Why am I never able to make you understand?"

Tears were pushing at his eyes, and she felt it like a punch in her gut. She wavered, finally felt the blood on her neck and the sting at her ear. "This wasn't supposed to happen," she offered lamely. Her face burned, her eyes burned. "He was just - he was supposed to give you the regimen and if I got - if it's just a little rough treatment then I can handle that, but it all got flipped upside down and that wasn't the deal."

"God damn it," he cried out, pushing off against the door and pacing to the other side of the bathroom. "Kate, that's not okay. Rough treatment? You're my wife. You're my wife and you came straight to the one person in the world that wants you dead; you delivered yourself to him. That's never going to be okay with me."

She pressed her hand against the weak pulse of blood at her neck; he still hadn't looked at her. "But it's okay with me because it's your life. It's your life, Castle. You heard what happens without the stabilizers to control your red blood cells. We've already experienced some of this and I-"

"You," he snapped, jerking around. "You do not get to do this. You do not get to _run away from me_ and offer yourself up to him like the virgin sacrifice."

"I wasn't running away-"

"And _then-"_

"You wouldn't even listen to me," she hissed back, felt the throb of her pulse in her neck. "You shut me down, Castle. I only wanted you to talk to him. He only wanted you to talk to him and he'd explain about the regimen."

"I wouldn't talk? What that _one_ time? Then you _try harder_," he yelled. The tears weren't gone; they trembled in his eyes and made him look thunderous with his fury. "You fucking try harder, Kate. You ask me again. You make demands. You withhold sex - hell, that would get my attention. Or better yet, can we go back to the time when you used to fuck me just to get your way? Because that's better than killing yourself."

Was it possible to love him so much it hurt and at the same time to want to rip his head off? "I wasn't - there was no intention to kill myself. I had a plan-"

"You _lunged at the knife_."

"I was holding his hand," she said slowly, grinding her teeth. "Your father thinks I'm a ridiculous, emotional woman. I was _playing into it_."

"Your neck is bleeding," he growled, but some of the roaring fire had been dimmed in his fury. "Your neck is _bleeding._"

"Staging a production requires a little bit of drama to ensure he believed I'd do it. I won't let him hold my life over your head. I'm not interested in doing this without you."

He'd gone still on the other side of the room and she was glad for it. If he was anywhere near her, she didn't know what she'd do. Punch his jaw for being a self-righteous, hypocritical asshole or wrap an arm around his neck and tear his clothes off and have him, just have him.

"Your neck is bleeding," he said again, as if reminding himself. "And you're inside Black's compound where a single word from him would end your life. I can't forget this, Kate."

"You can't go back to him," she said. "You can't. I didn't do all of this so that he could crush you again. I love you."

"It doesn't feel like it."

She closed her eyes and took it, took the words and his fury and the hungry worm of her guilt for trapping him here in the first place. How naive of her to think Black would just hand over the regimen. How completely foolish to think Black could resist fucking her over when he got Castle in his sights.

"Your neck is bleeding," he whispered.

Her eyes flared open and she found Castle standing in front of her, his eyes on the broken places.

"So is your hand," she pointed out. "And yours is worse."

He sighed, so heavy and grieving that it filled up all the space in the humid room, made her heart whimper.

"Kate," he rasped. "Kate, the whole side of your ear, your cheek, your neck - it's all bleeding. All of it. My hand's fine."

And he opened his palm and she saw the fat crust of his blood already thickening across the pulled flesh of his heart line, like the beginning of a scar.

His hand was fine.


	4. Chapter 4

**Close Encounters 14**

* * *

><p>Kate stared and Castle let her look, braced himself for her question and what he knew would have to be his answer.<p>

"Does it always heal this fast?" she whispered.

He cleared his throat and flexed his fingers slowly. "No," he said quietly.

"No?"

"Threkeld and Boyd warned me... what Black said is probably true. My red blood cells are unstable and they have a tendency to get - hyper."

"Hyper," she husked. Her eyes were riveted on his closing wound. "And that's why... this?"

"Most likely," he said. "My lipoproteins - Threkeld figures that they've been altered as well, to help control my red blood cells. But without those pills, the red blood cells go crazy and there aren't enough lipoproteins. In fact, he wanted me to eat more eggs. More cholesterol - good cholesterol. Those are lipoproteins."

Her face drained of all color and she lifted her eyes to stare at him. "Eggs? Oh, God. It's all true. What Black said. He kept shoving eggs in front of me, all day, kept trying to make me eat these nasty scrambled eggs and I just couldn't understand why he'd be _feeding _me, but he was proving it. He was proving that what he says about the regimen is right. He told me I had to convince you to take it."

Castle pressed his uninjured hand over his eyes for a second and tried to keep from exploding at her again. The fury and the anger weren't getting him anywhere and they only incited her own. He had to focus on getting them both the hell out of here - and if it was possible, discovering the whereabouts of the regimen as well.

And he had a plan to do that, if only she'd give him half a chance. "Look, Beckett, I'm going to admit that I need this. I don't like that we're being shackled to _his_ regimen for the rest of our lives, but if it gives me a life with you, then I'll do it. You understand me? You don't need to resort to... to throwing yourself off a cliff to get me to agree to this. I'm already there. I can't - Kate, it's no good to me without you."

Her teeth pulled in her bottom lip and worried it fiercely, and he knew from a thousand hours of therapy that she was struggling to make the words come out right. She reached out and unfurled his fingers from his wounded palm, holding him carefully. He realized it was the first tender touch between them since she'd said good-bye to him at the car - eons ago.

"I know that you don't like asking your father for this. I understand that it goes against everything you've remade yourself to be. You don't want to need the regimen."

"No, you actually don't understand," he said quickly. "I have spent my whole damn life protecting myself from him. He's my father and he was - he was supposed to want me for me but instead he turned me into a damn science experiment."

"But that's why I came instead of you. That's why it was me. To protect you from him."

"Kate, you didn't protect me. You took the one thing I've ever managed to keep from him and you offered it up. He might have fucked up my whole body, but he couldn't get to my _heart." _Castle felt his hands shaking as the grief washed over him again, that futile sense of having absolutely no control over the one thing he absolute had to have._ "_But then you did it for him. _You_ are my heart and you ripped it out and offered it up to my father. I can't forget that."

She stared at him, and he saw his own grief reflected back at him, swimming behind her eyes and twisting tightly in her mouth. He was hurting her and he didn't want to do that but sometimes it was the only thing that got through.

She dropped her eyes and her thumb traced lightly over the healing wound. "And I can't forget it either. You want to talk about ripping my heart out? Because you did that to me already, Castle. I _know_ what it's like to grieve for us. I know it. It's not just some abstract concept, some _what if_. You faked your own death and you didn't bother to tell me. I won't be made to feel guilty for chasing after the regimen when I was only trying to get what you need to live, what _I _need to live."

Again the burn of anger flashed through him - they were never going to resolve this - but he squeezed his wounded hand until the pain cut through more sharply than the anger. "Let's get what I need but do it together. Okay? I have a plan here. There's a way to do this that doesn't leave you battered and bloodied."

"Your plan is to stall for time? I don't see how that's going to get us the regimen. He's not stupid-"

"No, but I took the time to think before I flew halfway around the world into Black's trap." Mostly. He took at least _some_ time. "Mitch is on his way with a strike team. I know that it could be bad - very bad - but with you and I in here, sabotaging the effort, I think we can do this."

"And the regimen?"

"I've got that covered. I promise."

"Don't make me promises you can't keep. You never listen to me and I'm tired of hearing you make promises that are impossible. Like you're pawning me off, placating me, appeasing me so that I'll be soothed. I'm not soothed. I'm fucking pissed."

"I've got Malone on it, and I'm sure he's pulled in Ryan. So be pissed, I don't fucking care. But the moment Black made that phone call, Malone had him. By now, Malone's got every contact Black makes in relation to the regimen and soon we'll know where he _makes _this, not just who his courier is. And, Beckett, don't say I don't listen to you because that one was your idea."

She blinked. "My idea?"

"I found your fucking murder board inside the baby's closet."

"The _baby's_ closet? Stop trying to hurt me with word choice," she hissed, her fingers curling up hard around his. "We don't have a baby. We have an empty bedroom and it's going to stay that way if you _go back to him_."

"I'm not actually going back to him. You're sticking with me until the strike team gets here and then _we are going home._ We are going home, Kate Beckett, because I am so damn tired of this."

"What about the regimen?"

"For fuck's sake. Yes, with the regimen. We're going home with the regimen. Now take off your damn clothes and get in the hot bath."

"_What_?"

"You're soaked through with blood and only some of it is mine. If I have to keep looking at it, I'm going to do something worse than I've already done."

She took two sucked in breaths, like she was drawing in words for a fight, and then she reached down and stripped her shirt off over her head.

* * *

><p>Castle didn't look happy to do it, but he explained the results of the various tests at Stone Farm while she did what she could to clean the blood off. She dressed in the same grungy clothes she'd been wearing and wished he'd look at her.<p>

But he wouldn't.

When he'd finished explaining, she had sat down on the edge of the tiled pool, chilled to the bone despite the heat of the room. Everything he'd said had only reinforced the necessity of getting more of the regimen, but now there was the added thought that maybe if she'd waited just two more days, if she'd let Castle come to that conclusion on his own, they wouldn't be here.

He wouldn't be giving away his life for it.

Though he assured her it wouldn't happen, she knew him - she knew what he was like. If he really thought he could save her life by joining forces with his father, then he'd do it. He'd done it once before, faking his own death, and she didn't trust that he wouldn't do it again.

She realized the room was silent, that the water sloshed in the pool, that their words had fallen into nothing. She didn't know what else to say to him, though clearly Castle wanted promises from her she didn't know how to make.

It was a stalemate and she'd only been trying to force the issue. What good was her life without him? They did this together or not at all.

"I've told my side of it," Castle said finally. "You going tell me what he did to you?"

She lifted her eyes and wished he'd stop looming over her. "Nothing. He didn't touch me." Though that wasn't entirely true; he'd pressed alcohol to her face and cleaned the wound; he'd whispered his hands over her wrists and turned her by the shoulder like she was an object to be carelessly manipulated.

Castle's fingers came to her wrists and skimmed the bruises and raw places where she'd pulled too hard against the cuffs. "Nothing?"

"Handcuffs. That's all."

"And Deleware did this," he said quietly. His hand lifted to her cheek, and hovered over the wound, not touching.

"He picked me up at the airport, into a car at gunpoint. They put me on a boat and took me across to the island station. While we were on the boat, I kicked him in the groin and he shot at me."

"Shot you."

"At me," she clarified. "I guess he was - pissed. He's been - was - he was pretty angry with everything. He didn't think Black needed you."

"He shot you in the face," Castle said. His jaw was set as he trailed his almost-touch over the side of her cheek, the piece at her ear where the bullet had burned. "That was too close."

She didn't answer it; she already knew it'd been too close.

"Did he... he made it sound like he'd touched you," Castle said, his mouth twisting.

"No," she said clearly. "He'd seen the surveillance of your apartment. He'd been the one to watch all those tapes and report to Black. He was only..." She shrugged. She still wasn't sure if Deleware had been trying to freak her out, rattle her with how much he'd seen, or if he truly had been perversely getting off on it.

Castle's hand gripped the back of her neck and pulled, tugging her to her feet and hauling her body against his. His embrace was too fierce, to desperate still, and she felt the tremors that ran through him. She kept herself still and tried not to make it worse.

"Kate, if he gets the regimen and I take it-"

"When," she insisted.

"When I take it," he amended. "It knocks me out."

"Knocks you out?"

"Like when I had pneumonia."

"You were unconscious for four days," she whispered tightly.

"Yeah. Well, this is only one injection and the pills, I'm assuming, so it won't be quite that bad. Still, I'll have to sleep it off. Anywhere from four to eight hours."

"Eight hours?" she said. Castle couldn't fall asleep for eight hours - not _now_. In the middle of this. What if his father just snatched him while he slept and took off?

"I'll try to put it off as long as I can. But I'd guess that Black is going to want to see me take it as a show of good faith. He knows what it does to me, and that only if I truly was going back to him would I let myself be unconscious that long."

She circled her arms around his waist. "But you're not going back to him."

"I'm not going back to him, Kate. This is what I want, right here - you. I'd rather have a year with you than nothing."

"A year?" she groaned. "Is that - did they say you'd only have a year without it?"

"I don't know. They don't know. It's not something they've ever seen before."

He was a man with a terminal disease and she'd just been trying to save him - just save him - but instead, she'd gotten him into an even worse situation. A choice between her life and a life with Black. Which was no life at all.

"I'm not going back to him, Kate. I won't. Understand me. If it comes down to it, I won't take his regimen and I'lll fly you home and get you pregnant and we'll take life as it comes. And then if I - when it happens, the swiss cheese and whatever else, then at least we'd have lived what-"

"Unacceptable," she groaned. "No. I won't do it. You think it's okay to get me pregnant and then leave me? As if it makes it _easier_ to be without you if I have to look at our son's face every day for the rest of my life and see you in him but not have you?"

"Okay, okay," he whispered, arms tightening around her. "Won't talk about that right now."

"You can't do that to me."

"And you can't do it to me either."

She pushed out of his arms and stalked away from him, vibrating with her fury, her desperation, the thick and cold weight in her throat that came from knowing she'd done this. She'd made it this bad and she _still_ didn't know how to possibly salvage any of it.

He didn't look much happier. "It's obvious my father knows how to control me, Beckett. What I don't get is why you don't seem to understand it."

"Understand what? That he wants me out of your life? I've understood that for a long time."

"No. I don't get why you don't realize that running straight into his arms gives him everything he needs to control me. You go straight for him."

"We need him," she said simply, shaking her head. "What can I do? We need him for the regimen."

"I'm going to make it so that we never need him," Castle growled. "Never. Because I don't want that man having control over my life anymore."

"Your plan, you mean," she said hesitantly. It didn't seem tenable, but then again, hers hadn't had any forethought to it either. Look how it was turning out. "Malone is tracing his phone calls and tracking down the supplier."

"Yes. As soon as we have confirmation of that, you and I are out of here."

"Black will know," she said. "He'll know what you've done."

"We'll move fast. I flew a plane here. We'll take it wherever in the world we need to go. It's got at least five more hours of fuel and we can refuel in Rome or Paris if we need more."

"And what if Malone can't find it in time?" she asked, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. The heat didn't seem to penetrate. She was drained of all that bitter and desperate anger and now it was just this hollow place.

"I don't know - We'll barricade ourselves in a room."

"Barricade ourselves in a room."

"When I have to take the regimen."

She grit her teeth and folded her arms across her chest.

"You think Black is going to let me anywhere near you?"

"I think he's going to do whatever I damn well tell him to. I'm not letting you out of my sight."

"It might be wiser for me to lay low," she offered. "So he thinks you're playing along. If you keep away from me, then-"

"I don't like that at all."

"It'll be easier for me sabotage this place from inside. You said there's a strike team coming. Well, if we can take out Black's men, destroy his communication system before they get here-"

"And you think _you_ can do that? Alone?"

She felt the spark of frustration again. "While you're playing up to him, keeping him distracted, yeah. I can do it."

"How? You going to kill them? How many men does he have here and where are their positions? What kind of firepower do they have? What-"

"Six men," she said, then shook her head. "No - now four. Del and the man in the court yard are down. So four men, Castle. You keep Black distracted and I can take them."

"You plan on tying them up? Because you know we can't be checking behind our backs, waiting for them to slip their ropes and-"

"I'll incapacitate them," she said swiftly. She didn't think she wanted to murder anyone else - she was sick to death of _death_ - but for his life, to end the twisted game? She'd do what she had to do. Kneecaps were pretty vicious but the shot worked.

Castle was more than just unhappy, but she knew he didn't see another way around it either. It made sense.

"Fine," he said. "When the regimen gets here, if the strike team hasn't - I'll come find you and we'll lock ourselves in a room to wait it out. If by that time it's just Black, if his mercenaries are out of the way, then we might have a chance."

She nodded and unfolded her arms from around her waist, but her body still felt like a stranger's, like she didn't quite have control over it. She wanted to curl up in a corner and press her face to the wall, but she thought that was more because Castle still wouldn't touch her. Or look at her straight.

Because he'd said he couldn't forget it. What she'd done.

"Castle?"

"Yeah, I know. How about this room? Or is there someplace else?"

The women's side held cameras and surveillance, but if they had taken out Black's men and he saw what was coming for him, it might not matter. If she hadn't, she wasn't sure the bathroom was a good enough place to hide out.

"How about we meet up here," she said finally. "And we can move to a different location if I find us something better?"

"Okay," he said quietly. "How do I get in touch with you when it arrives?"

They had no idea how long this would take, when Black's contact might arrive with the regimen. It couldn't be far, not if Black had planned this, but the idea of being separate from Castle, no way of quickly reassuring herself he was all right...

And yeah, she realized he was thinking the same thing.

"Check back here in an hour," she said finally. "Maybe I can find us cell phones on one of the guards. I know Del had one."

Castle nodded. "I'll see if I can't get Del's while you..."

She waited but Castle closed his eyes and pressed the heel of his hand into the bridge of his nose. He looked tired and his skin flushed like he had a fever. Though maybe that was the work of his red blood cells.

His wounded hand looked cleaner already, just within the last few moments.

He needed the regimen.

"While I clean up the mess I've made," she said into his silence.

Castle's eyes flashed open and he looked so very bleak.

"I'll be fine," she promised him. "I have a knife in my shoe and I know the floor plan pretty well already. I can do this. You distract Black."

Castle stood apart from her but she remembered now that was by her own doing; she'd pushed out of his arms and stalked away from him.

So now she came back, sliding her body in close to his, embracing him. He was rigid for an instant, like he couldn't stand it, and then he wrapped an arm around her neck and pressed his face to hers.

Still he hadn't kissed her.

* * *

><p>When they paused at the door to the bathroom, ready to go their separate ways, Castle's guts still churned with the hollow, sick feeling of not having said enough, done enough, to make her understand. To force her to understand him - what she was to him and what he couldn't live without.<p>

Nothing was at all resolved and everything was broken, and he had the worst sensation that the next time he saw her, it wouldn't be like this. It wouldn't be this _easy _ and nothing about them was easy right now.

"Wait," he said quickly, pressing his hand to her hip to stay her. Her eyes jerked to his like his touch was electric, but the weight of his heart was so heavy that he barely felt the connection. "Wait, just..."

She paused, she waited; she looked like she needed to know whatever it was he was trying to say.

"I don't like this," he got out finally, the words as difficult as rocks. "I don't want you to do this. I don't want you sneaking around this place just hoping someone doesn't get you first. These guys are professional mercenaries and I wish you weren't doing this."

"I wish you weren't with your father," she said back. "I wish you wouldn't go back to him - ever. What if he just - takes you? What if he just rips you away from me and I never know?"

His hand dropped from her hip and they stared at each other. His chest felt like there was a sucking hole where his heart should be, everything collapsing in.

"But there's nothing we can do about it," she said. Her voice was as hollowed out as his own. "I can't go to Black alone. And you can't take out the mercenaries without Black knowing about it - he wants you, Castle. Not me."

"You're wrong, you know. He wants you," Castle croaked. It felt like a weight - every truth a thousand pounds added to his shoulders. "That's how he keeps getting to me. He gets to you. You do all the work for him-"

"Castle," she moaned.

"Just." He growled and ran his hand through his hair, couldn't figure out a way to make her understand. "You are the only thing I care about, Kate. The only thing that matters to me. And he knows that. He goes after you. So just - I'm just saying - be damn careful. I want you back in this room in an hour. I need you back at this room in an hour."

"I'll be here."

But she didn't reach out to him. He wished she would, wished she'd use her body to soothe him like she'd always done before. He used to complain about that - he used to find _fault_ in it; what an asshole he'd been. He'd never known what it felt like to not be able to get to her, to not be able to make her come back to him. She was firmly entrenched in this action, no matter that it had been foolhardy and unthinking. She wanted him to live and she assumed this was the only way.

"But, Castle? You have to be here too."

"I will. Of course I will."

"Don't say, _of course_, like there's never a possibility that your father can't get to _you_. Because he does - he does all the time. He convinces you to do things and I can't trust that you'll be here either."

"I'll be here. I won't let him stop me."

And then she did reach out for him, her fingers curling around his forearm like that was all she'd allow herself. "I just want you to be careful around him. Just because he wants you doesn't mean he wants the real you. He wants the machine he made, not the real man, not my husband. I want my husband back in this room."

He ignored the thin grip of her fingers around his arm and instead he grabbed her shoulder and drew her into him, made her stay close, made her push up against him. "Do you realize that you're the only one who's ever said I _could _be more? You're the only one who has ever told me I'm not just the CIA's machine."

"You're so much more," she mumbled into his jaw. Her nose was pressed at his ear. "You're everything to me, Castle."

"Everyone else," he confessed. "Everyone. They've abandoned or manipulated me for what they wanted. That's all I've ever been. The one no one wanted or worse - wanted only for what I could do for them. But not you."

"Never," she said, vehemence in her tone that broke through the glass that had separated them. Her body lifted into his and fell away again, as if she didn't know how to use it any more. "You're more to me. You've always been more."

"That's why I need you in this room, Kate. If you don't come back to me, it won't be your husband who waits and waits and waits for you. If you're gone - then there's no one to be more _for. _I'm only a machine then, and a broken one at that."

She came up into him again, their bodies crashing against each other, still clumsy and awkward. He wondered if that's all they'd be from now on, if it was just two people breaking themselves against each other.

"Will you ever forgive me?" she choked out.

"Of course," he said immediately. "Of course, I will."

Her hands were fists in his shirt as she hung on. "But not yet."

He opened his mouth to _say_ something, but the words were stillborn. She shivered and pushed her forehead against his neck; he could feel her choking it back and he knew it was his fault, but he didn't know what to say to make it better.

"Castle."

"I just - it's just so hard to forget," he whispered. "What you did. Hard to trust that you'll stay."

She was silent, her hands in fists, her forehead pressing at his neck so hard he though she might cut off his air.

"But if it gets us the regimen... I don't know that I can apologize for it," she said finally. And then her head lifted from the haven of his body and she stepped away. "But I'll be in this room in an hour, Rick. I'm not abandoning you."


	5. Chapter 5

**Close Encounters 14**

* * *

><p>Castle headed first to the courtyard, thinking either he'd find his father waiting there or he'd pilfer Deleware's pockets before his father found him. He had no number to <em>call<em> to reach Beckett, except he'd probably attempt to communicate with Malone if he could.

When he stepped through the green baize door, his father wasn't under the orange tree where Castle had left him. But Deleware was. As if he was of no use any longer and hardly worth moving the body away.

That might be true, but it made Castle think his father had some alternate plan for this place, that maybe it wasn't his base of operations. And Castle had flown a plane straight here - would Black be looking to appropriate it?

He walked quickly towards the agent's body and made himself keep his eyes on the mangled face. He'd ripped open Deleware's neck so forcefully that he'd practically decapitated the man, severing his throat and esophagus, cutting through the muscles of his neck so that the bones of his spine were showing - and the wound seemed a living thing, separate and parasitic on top of the torso. The face was splashed with blood, the mouth disjointed from the effort, the eyes open and black.

When Castle got closer, he realized the black and moving wound was really a swarm of flies. The winged insects crawled across the gaping mouth, and as Castle drew near enough to bend down and rifle through the man's clothing for his cell phone, they buzzed up angrily en masse, swirling around Castle's prying fingers, dodging his living flesh in an attempt to get back to the dead one.

It was hard to breathe.

It had been a long time since Castle had blatantly killed someone on a mission. No wonder Kate had looked at him like that.

He found the man's cell phone in the breast pocket of his flak jacket, slipped it out with two fingers. It was passcode protected, but he could make an emergency call to Malone's computer terminal and Malone would reverse hack it.

At least there was that. He pushed the phone down into his boot, fitting it into the inside pocket Beckett had once insisted he have custom-made after the incident in Copenhagen. He reached out and pressed Del's eyelids shut, and it was at that very moment that his father came walking back into the courtyard from another door.

"Don't waste sentiment over him," Black said in that clipped, careful accent. "He was a poor stand-in."

_Prodigal son returns. _Hadn't Deleware said as much?

"I served with him," Castle said, grateful some instinct or guilt had pushed him to do it and thus hiding his finding the phone. "I fought with him. Once he saved my life."

He wasn't even sure if it was true, but better to have his father think that Castle was only paying his respects.

"Take his weapon. Don't leave it lying out here for... Don't let it go to waste."

For Beckett. Wasn't that what his father meant?

"Where's Beckett?" Black said then.

Castle stood with the weapon in his hand, felt it heavy and useful at his thigh. He could do this right now. He could end everything and never have to worry about finding Kate in an alley on her knees. He could do it.

But the regimen. The secret might die with his father if he did it. And while he wouldn't care - he'd gladly let it die - he knew that Beckett cared, that Beckett thought it was the only way to save his life and since he could grudgingly admit that might be true, he understood now in a poignant and terrible way what she was willing to do to have it.

His father wouldn't even need to put the gun to her head; she might put herself in the alley all of her own volition if she thought it'd save Castle.

So Castle didn't lift the weapon, but neither did he hand it over when his father reached for it. Black gave him a long, hard look.

"Where's Beckett?" he said again.

"I made her go look for fresh clothes. She can't get on a plane looking like that."

"And so she is? Just like that she's agreed to leave you here?"

"She doesn't have any say in it," Castle growled. "If she wants me to take the damn regimen, she gets on a plane in Tunis."

"I'll buy her plane ticket myself. Come, Richard. We have things to discuss." And just that easily, his father proceeded to lead him straight into the heart of his working empire.

* * *

><p>Beckett felt the blood rushing through her body as she paused inside the room. After leaving Castle at the green baize door, she'd gone the opposite direction of her explorations earlier, heading for what she hoped was the nerve center of the station's operations. She figured she had a small window where she still held the element of surprise, but the moment Black knew she was alone inside his headquarters, he was going to send that guy Maine after her.<p>

She felt the handle of the knife against her fingers, the weight of it in her palm. She knew there was a man just on the other side of this door, that he would enter unaware at any moment, and she wanted to be ready.

She had to be ready. She'd made Castle one of those empty promises saying that she'd _be back for him_. And she couldn't disappoint. She'd survived thirteen days dying in Russia, she could win a brief skirmish with a paid mercenary. Especially when she had the upper hand.

Especially when Rick Castle had been abandoned by every single person in his life. But not her. Not her.

It was dark in the room but she'd made a brief inventory and discovered it held the servers for the listening station. It'd been a simple matter to disconnect a few USB cords, work loose a few others until it had started to look like systems were failing. She'd managed to douse the lights in this whole wing, and though she knew Black would know what was going on, she wasn't sure he'd get to his man in time to warn him.

Just as she was wiping the sweat from her hands, shifting the knife to her left, the door opened and light spilled in from the corridor. A flashlight, since the overheads were out.

The man grunted at the continued darkness and in the glow of blue and emergency beams somewhere far down the hall, she saw his silhouette, the hazy form of his substance in the doorway.

Shit, he was the tank. Beefy and looming, the man shuffled inside and played the light over the space. Beckett froze and kept herself against the hard sterilite shelf, waited until the beam moved past her. When the man stepped into the space and began hunting for the missing connections, she slid on soft, bare feet towards his back.

He must have sensed her presence at the last minute, because he jerked around with a hand up at his throat to block her blow.

But Beckett was already slashing at his gut instead. She got him shallowly in the stomach; she darted around and cut his hamstrings in two quick swipes even as he bellowed and turned clumsily for her. His legs collapsed out from under him but still he reached for her, drawing his weapon from his holster.

Beckett kicked out and caught his wrist, could feel it snap against her heel and the side of her foot. The man flung himself backwards, still struggling against her, and one of his hands caught the side of a shelving unit even as his legs dragged uselessly behind him. She darted in again, thinking to slice at his biceps, incapacitate him, but he roared and began to bring the shelving unit down on her.

She scrambled away, and the computers crashed down on him with a sickening crunch. His body jerked once and then laid still.

Kate sank to the floor for a moment, knowing what she had to do, but hesitating.

She had to go before they came looking for him, for the reason why half their systems were now gone, but first.

Beckett crabbed forward and grabbed for his cargo pockets, patting him down until she felt the cell phone. She closed it in her fist and then rushed for the door.

They'd be here soon.

* * *

><p>Forty minutes into the hour time limit, all of the security monitors went dark. Black growled and turned to Castle with a finger pointing hard at his sternum. "What's that bitch done now? Richard. I can't believe how you've let her get so out of control."<p>

Castle's nostrils flared and he made a fist. "I told you. She's finding clean clothes for her flight." He'd been listening to this shit for half an hour, his father's denigration of Beckett at every turn. "Sitting tight until I escort her out of here."

"I doubt that. What is this? My security cameras are suddenly gone?"

"Maybe your mercs are lounging around now that Deleware is dead. Maybe it's a power outage. What the hell do I know about it?"

"This is what she does," Black hissed. Castle wasn't sure he'd ever seen the man quite so furious. "This is always what she does to us. She fucks everything up. I don't know why you can't see just how _damaged_ she is. Everything she touches, she _ruins_. Deleware was a thousand times the agent she is and you should've cut open her throat instead of-"

Castle punched him.

Black went down like a tree, felled hard, and smacked into the communication system that was mostly dark. His face bounced off the control board and then he fell to the floor and Castle stood over him, the rage still churning in his guts.

Black was out cold. Blood streamed from his bottom lip, that twisted smile, and Castle could see the bruise forming along his jaw.

He hadn't meant to do that, but now that he had, he realize he'd created the perfect opportunity. Castle pulled the small black case from his cargo pants pocket, unzipped its semi-hard cover. Inside it was the thumb-sized injector that Malone had provided him back when they'd been going over this plan, when Castle had assumed he'd be leading the strike team.

He hooked his finger under the edge of the case, the smooth, cool metal that housed the unobtrusive tracking device.

The injector nestled against the pad of his thumb and Castle brought it close to his father's prone form, reached out to hike up the sleeve of his shirt. His forearm was well-muscled, the faint signs of a tattoo somewhere back in the mists of time and long ago erased with laser treatment. Castle knew it was the ideal spot to inject him because the scar tissue from that tattoo would hide the initial bump.

After a few hours, the tracking device would meld seamlessly into Black's muscle, using its own electric impulses to keep it active. The pain of getting punched in the face would distract him from the minor ache in his arm as well.

And then they'd be able to have the peace of mind of knowing exactly where his damned father was at any time. Not only that, but when he moved to his latest lair, they'd know exactly where it was. All of his contacts? Compromised now.

Castle set his jaw and pressed the injector to the lasered tattoo, pushed the depressor and heard the click and hiss of the tracker going into his father's arm.

Black was still out cold.

Mission fucking accomplished. Time to go home.

Castle checked the time on the stolen cell phone and then he got back to his feet, headed out the door. Ten minutes to rendezvous.

* * *

><p>Kate Beckett had gotten stuck.<p>

And now she was late.

She crept down the hallway, shadowing the tall, wiry man ahead of her. It looked like he was headed the same direction she was, and she didn't want him to turn around suddenly and come upon her. She had the knife and the weapon she'd taken off the dead man from the computer room, but she didn't want to draw any more attention to herself.

It'd been miserable trying to escape the server area. The moment she'd ducked out of the door, she'd heard booted feet heading her direction. She'd had to hole up in a ventilation duct in the hall - an old, stone-worked bypass that had led her eventually out into a section of the compound she'd never seen before. But she had caught a glimpse of the men as they ran to the server room, and she'd been dismayed to find three more than she had expected.

She'd killed one, but they'd gained three more. Not good odds. She might not be able to take them all out, especially since she'd lost the element of surprise.

The man ahead of her now had been one of the first on scene, so he must be some kind of squad leader - in charge now that Deleware was dead. If they were rattled by it, it didn't show. The new leader had a thin frame but the face of a rabbit, large front teeth and the pinched-in nose, pushed-together eyes.

She had no doubt this man was hunting her down, that he wanted nothing better than to exact his revenge. She couldn't be certain that these hired soldiers wouldn't do whatever they damn well wanted to her - what loyalty did they have to Black?

So she had to be careful. But it was making her late.

When Beckett realized that the wiry, rabbit-like man had led her out of the unoccupied section and into the residential area, she paused well away and pulled out the phone she'd stolen. Castle was supposed to have gotten Deleware's phone, and if he had, then Beckett could text his number directly and the CIA would route it to Del's phone - and she could warn him about the man ahead of her now.

That was, if Castle had pinged them correctly, if he had remembered to do it at all.

Still, she didn't have much choice.

It took her a moment to find the text message function on the outdated phone, and then she had to type in the long, complicated string of numbers that would send her direct to Castle's permanent, black ops number. She wrote, _Guy headed your way; I'm tracking him now. Double team him? You better have set up your phone._

She couldn't wait for an answer though; she had to keep going. It was already ten minutes past the promised hour and Rabbit-Face was headed Castle's direction. If he opened that bathroom door, Castle would be caught by surprise since he was expecting her - and not the Easter Bunny.

Just when she was at the last corner to turn before heading down the final hallway, the phone in her hands came alive.

_Beckett, thank God. Double team a-ok. Heard him in the hall, he went into room facing north. Meet you there._

Kate let out a breath and her shoulders eased; she slipped around the corner and saw, far down the hall towards the north, her husband coming slowly out of the bathroom. She saw the smile on his face, his relief mirroring her own, and they crept towards each other, Castle gesturing towards the room.

Must be where Bunny slept.

They met up on opposite sides of the open door, eyes connecting because their fingers couldn't, and Castle slowly drew his weapon. She did the same, and then they squared off against the Rabbit-Faced man.

* * *

><p>"This is getting messy," Castle sighed. His wife, dragging the body under the bed with his help, elbowed him hard for it. "What? It is."<p>

The body had made a streak across the floor and Castle did the ungracious thing they both were thinking and kicked the man's leg under the cot. Kate was already draping the blanket to hide it from the hall, and Castle stepped back.

"I got one other," she said. "In the server room."

"Explains the systems failure. The cameras are all out, Beckett, so it should make this easier."

"I'm sorry I was late."

He hadn't realized he'd needed the apology, but he had. She'd promised and she'd broken the promise and he wanted it to not be important, but it was. "Thanks. Just glad you're here."

She brushed her hand down the blanket and turned to him. "I don't want to have to kill them."

"But?"

"But that's two. And six more to go."

He nodded, hand flexing around the weapon he still cradled. "Six?'

"That I know of." She looked at him from the side, as if she didn't want to confront that head on. "There might be more."

"Oh yeah?" He tried to keep calm, but it churned in him. "Black called for reinforcements. I don't think he believes me about leaving."

She nodded slowly. The dead man under the bed was hidden but there was all this other stuff they couldn't sweep away. "Has Mitchell updated you?" she asked.

"Not yet. He will when they're an hour out."

"An hour? Not much time to prepare."

"All we can do. Can't let Black know. He's been a step ahead for a while now."

Beckett nodded again but there seemed to still be something between them, something large and unwieldy.

Castle scraped his hand down his face. "I punched him."

"What?" she croaked. Her eyes snapped up to his. "You punched... your father?"

"Black. Yes. I... it was instinct, but it gave me the chance to plant a tracker on him. Or in him, rather. Malone gave me a thumb injector and I injected it just under Black's skin. So we'll know where he is - we'll always know where he is."

"Oh," she said, staring at him. She rubbed her thumb against her eyebrow like she had a headache, and he bet she did. He did too. He didn't want her going back out there against six more guys when who knew how many more waited for her. And he didn't want to go back to his father either, though he supposed he should, keep playing the game until the strike team got here.

"Maybe you could stay in here?" he said quietly. "Just - lay low, Beckett."

"No. What if he - no. If Black has men here, then he still has power over us. We're not on even footing if he holds all the cards."

"He already does," Castle ground out. He wanted to smash things and hit his father again; he didn't want to play nice. "He holds the regimen and he's got your life-"

"Castle," she said quickly. "He has your life too. So we're even, all right? Just... stop."

Even? They were _even_? What the hell-

"No more punching your father," she said. "Even if you did get a chance to inject that tracker - that's good. It is. It will lead us to the regimen most likely. But Castle-"

"I can't pretend like he's - that he hasn't done what he's done, that he's somehow a good father."

"You don't have to. I'm not asking you to. Just - don't beat him up. He has to think you're willing to trade your life for mine-"

"I'd do it in a second-"

"But you're not," she said. "You're not really doing it. Castle."

"No. But I would. If it meant your life. But that's not going to happen because Mitchell is on his way and we're getting the hell out of here as soon as we know where the regimen is."

She gave him a shaky smile. "We will. And I've got to do what I can to make it easy on Mitch. So I should go - since the cameras are down. You go back to Black, see if... well, I guess you make it up to him somehow."

"I won't." He wanted to clutch at her with both hands, wanted to go with her. Not back to his father.

"Castle. We do this, do what we have to do, and then we get out of here together." She stood with her hands at her sides, separate from him, and he couldn't move to bridge the distance, could only feel it churn tighter in him. Her cheek bruised, her neck that thin line of blood, battered and battle-ready.

"I want a new plan," he said, the words rushing out.

"This is the plan we've got," she said tightly. "You figure out what Black is doing, how many guys, and you message me. You get the regimen, you come find me or I come find you and we hole up together until Mitchell gets here."

"While you... do this," he said. "The messy stuff. The 'not killing' stuff."

"I'll do... whatever it takes, Castle."

He didn't like that either. Because he knew she didn't want to murder them, knew that it would make her hesitate.

"Give me two hours this time, Rick."

He growled and reached out across the distance, gripped her shoulder and tugged her against him. Their bodies met and clattered, the weapon in his fist hitting her spine too hard, and she flinched. But he didn't let go. "Two hours?"

"I have to be more careful this time."

She was twisting it around to make it about being safe so he'd agree, but of course he would. "Fine. Two hours. Then back at the bathroom."

"Like we're in middle school, hooking up in the bathroom?"

"Middle school?" he snorted. "Look at you, early bloomer."

"Shut up," she laughed. Her fists gripped his shirt. "I hate you."

"I hate you more," he whispered back.

* * *

><p>Castle found his father at the communications room nursing his black jaw with an ice pack and a scowl. He'd never seen Black so flustered and angry before, never seen him so unable to cope with the circumstances.<p>

It gave him hope.

Beckett was out there, screwing things up royally, and that gave him hope.

So long as Kate was out there.

He just couldn't be sure she'd remain _out there_ - alive - when so many were hunting her down.

His father lowered the ice pack and met his son's look with a cold and controlled-once-more stare. "You punched me."

"You said I should've slit her throat."

"It's the truth."

"To you maybe. I have no interest in your version of the truth," Castle said. He couldn't help it. "I'm doing this against my will, and it's best you know that. I don't want to have anything to do with you. But for Kate-"

"Right, right. For her you'd fucking ruin yourself, you'd wreck the mission, you'd sacrifice others' lives. This isn't how I raised you."

"Thank fuck," he growled. "Because if I acted on how you'd raised me, I'd have missed out on the best damn thing that ever happened to me."

"You'll come to the truth, given time and space from that bi-" Black paused, seemed to swallow it down with effort. "From her. Just... a little time and space is all you need. You'll see."

Black was truly teetering on the brink of control; Castle had never seen him so unhinged before. Like he couldn't quite grasp the threads of his determination, like he needed help to stay centered.

Well, join the damn club. Castle was barely functioning just thinking about having to do this for two more hours until he could get back to her.

"It won't happen," Castle promised. Not just that he'd grow apart from her if given time and space, but that he would at all be separated from her. Not going to happen. "And you had better start understanding that, or I _will_ kill you. No matter what I need, no matter the regimen, no matter how much she begs me to spare your life. I'll fucking kill you if you don't leave her alone."

Black set his jaw against his son, or maybe it was the shadow of bruises along his face and the crooked cast to his mouth, but either way, Black refused to acknowledge that statement.

The problem was, Castle couldn't be sure that killing his father wouldn't send Beckett completely over the edge. She had an addictive, obsessive personality and she had gotten it into her head, burned into her psyche, that she couldn't survive without him - and that he couldn't survive without the regimen. And well, according to Boyd, that might be true.

He knew it was his own damn fault; he knew that faking his death had been tantamount to abandoning her in the worst and cruelest way. There were still consequences to that choice that he was reaping today. She would never survive if he killed his father because she couldn't be certain that some day they wouldn't _need_ Black's knowledge of the regimen to save Castle from his screwed up red blood cells.

And because he loved his wife more than he hated his father, he wouldn't kill Black.

But _Black_ didn't need to know that.

"The regimen injection and the supplemental pills will be here in four hours," Black said finally, as if brushing off his son's threats entirely. "I suggest you find a way to work with me until then because I'll damn well keep it from you if I think you're not holding up your end of the deal."

"Oh, I am," he growled out. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't believe that Beckett needs me to take this more than I need to do the taking. So fuck off. You have her as a damn ally on your side. Might want to stop trying to kill her, since it's the only one you're going to get. I'll never love you - I'll never want to be by your side. You tried to kill her; you're nothing to me."

"That's not true. I'm something all right. Else, neither of you would be here."

Castle wanted to punch him all over again, but the thought of Beckett out there and the repercussions she might take from his actions now - it stayed his hand.

Instead, he dropped back to the other chair in the room and he kept his ears and eyes open for intel he could use to help her.

* * *

><p>Beckett breathed harshly through the scent of blood and bowels, her hands in fists to keep from throwing up.<p>

Two more dead. Two dead.

Two dead.

She shook as she moved for the knife, pulled it sickly from the man's guts. She had to still her hand to wipe it clean against the man's pant leg; she stayed hunched in the close confines of the storage room. She hadn't meant to. She hadn't.

It had just been so cramped in here. It had been tight and the man had come for her before she'd even realized it and then the second right on top of him and there'd been the gunshot, but even as she'd clenched tight for the impact, the man who had her in a chokehold had gurgled his death across her neck.

She shivered and wiped the blade obsessively against the well-worn gray fatigues, the knife singing as it swiped, the blue emergency light spilling in from the hallway.

Two dead. Two dead, and the first an accident, but the second-

After the man had bloomed his blood over Kate's chest and neck, her lips clamped tightly shut to keep it out of her mouth, the soldier with the gun had roared his fury and battle cry into the small space of her hiding spot and he'd brought the gun down hard.

The blow had glanced off her shoulder and echoed pain into her jaw, her groan involuntary. The man had brought the gun up again to hit at her, and she'd fumbled under the dead one to get at her knife where it had been knocked under her.

The second blow had been weaker but no less excruciating, the reverb causing her ear to ring and blackness to burst in front of her eyes. She'd cursed in a yelp and ripped the knife from under her, brought it up awkwardly.

And perfectly.

She'd sunk the knife deep into his side, a ripping lunge that had torn away half of his belly. He'd bellowed and screamed at the last, his pain rippling out into fear and finally into death. Though it had taken too long; it had taken entirely too long.

Kate was upright now, barely standing, and the two bodies were pancaked on the floor where she'd been under them, blood everywhere, but it'd been an accident. A mistake.

Two dead and she hadn't meant to.

She was either fucking this up big time or she was deadlier and more CIA-brainwashed than she'd thought. Training had kicked in when she wasn't paying attention, and now that she was the last one standing, she wasn't sure really where she stood.

She pushed the knife into its sheath and pressed it flat to her side where it hung awkwardly on her jeans. She kept hitting her elbow into its plastic-grip handle, a reminder of what she was doing, but she passed cold fingers against her throat and felt the warm, sticky blood there.

Beckett pulled out the cell phone from her back pocket and shakily checked the time. She had twenty minutes to get back to the bathroom and she was deep at the perimeter, probably where they'd been keeping watch, and she wasn't sure she could get back.

She messaged Castle her ETA and her renewed promise, and then she pressed the lock into the door knob and shut the storage room up tight. She tried the handle from the other side and it held firm.

No one would be able to get inside.

And definitely no one would be coming out.


	6. Chapter 6

**Close Encounters 14: A View To A Kill**

* * *

><p>After what seemed like an excruciating time, Castle managed to give his father the slip; he had literally been following his father down the hall towards the server room and then he'd just turned around and darted the other way. He was making quick time back towards the bathroom when he saw Beckett suddenly just ahead of him.<p>

"Kate," he hissed, appalled that she was in plain view and apparently unconcerned with people coming up behind her. "Beckett."

She turned and he cursed, heart plummeting, and hurried towards her. Crimson stained her throat and chest, her eyes a little too hard, her fingers clenched around a knife, fingernails dark with blood.

"Castle," she murmured.

"Are you hurt?" he got out, gripping her by the arm and pressing her against the wall. They were too exposed but he didn't want to move her in case.

"Hurt?"

"Beckett, snap out of it."

She jerked like he'd touched her to a live wire, and her pupils flared and contracted once more. "Not my blood."

He gripped the back of her shirt, and he dragged her with him down the hall, drawing his weapon for cover. He forearmed her to the wall as they reached the junction, did a quick headcheck to see the coast was clear. When he released her and started out again, she made a noise and caught the pocket of his cargo pants.

"Wait," she garbled. A shake of her head had her clear though and she opened her eyes to find his. "Wait a second. I hear something."

How could she hear _anything_ over the sound of his still-rushing heart?

And then he heard it too, the boots and men, the growl of a command coming down the hall. Three, he guessed, and he turned quickly back to Beckett to push her the opposite direction.

She was already going. "This way," she whispered. "Into the ventilation system."

He followed her this time, brain still burned and scarred by the image of her covered in another's blood, but he managed to keep up. She stopped at a room and shouldered open the door with a shove, the wood was warped and it scraped the stones as it moved.

"Through here," she murmured, shutting the door after them. "Hurry, Castle."

"I'm hurrying," he muttered. She was acting like she hadn't been stumbling down the hall, bloodied and remote. She reached up and used her slim, strong fingers to pry at a metal grate that had been obviously fitted over a much older shaft. The stones still held firm but the cover wasn't snug and it came loose with some shifting.

He gave her his thigh as a stool and she vaulted inside with ease; he was gratified to find that he could grip the edges of the vent and haul himself up without trouble. She handed the metal grate through to him and he pushed it out and fitted it against the hole.

And just in time.

The door slammed open with a groan of wood and the three mercenaries stormed inside with weapons drawn. It was a matter of seconds, a quick check of the unused furniture and then back out again, but Castle trembled as he held the grate in place, sweat slicking his fingers and palms, the back of his neck.

"Clear," she breathed.

Still he couldn't seem to let go of the grate. She leaned in at his back, her breath hot at his neck and in wicked contrast to the chilled bloodstain across her chest. Her arm snaked around his waist and held on, her body to his, and the cramp of his fingers began to ease.

After a moment, he could release the metal slats and the grate stayed in place. They were safe.

She didn't let go of him though; she stayed curled at his back with her lungs expanding her chest and pressing into him and he drew his hand to cover hers, the thin bones of her arm and wrist beneath his.

"We're down two," she murmured after a while.

"That explain the blood?"

"One shot the other. On accident," she added, as if that was necessary. He felt her forehead press to his spine and her fingers flared at his stomach.

"You okay?"

"I don't think so," she choked.

He moved to see her, get to her, but she grunted and held him tighter. "Stay. Stay for a moment."

"Okay," he said quickly. "Okay. Won't move."

He could feel her gulping against his back, the movement of her chest rising and falling hard, but she held it together. She was holding him together too.

He rubbed his hand on top of hers and kept his breaths as even as he could and eventually she crawled around straddled his lap. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her body flush with his, breathing her in - even the iron scent of blood not hers.

He might not be able to forget what she'd done, throwing herself into certain death, and the anger might still churn in his guts like acid, but she needed him. She needed him and the rest could wait.

* * *

><p>Beckett took the black undershirt he stripped off and brought it to her nose, inhaling the masculine, heavy odor of his body. Sweat and work, metal and oil, faintly blood and the spice of deodorant. It was still warm too, and when she shrugged it on over her bare skin, it felt like the drape of his hands down her body.<p>

"Did Mitch get in touch with you?"

"Yes," he said. "Why I came looking for you early. They're slated to arrive in four hours. They're coming in as a strike team, so we'll have to pray we're out of range."

She chewed on her lower lip. "But the regimen."

"Malone got the signal," he confirmed. He was pulling on his camo-green thermal once more, adjusting it with one hand as he fitted his holster over his shoulders. "You gonna be warm enough?"

"I'm fine," she said, then shook her head to amend that. "I'm good. Feels good to be clean." She'd washed again in the bathing pool, but she'd been reluctant to try to launder her shirt. His was welcome and the smell of him haunted her, settled her.

"The boys are chasing down the signal now," he admitted. "They'll know where it originated within the hour. We'll have something to go on, a lead, and we won't need him."

It wasn't what she was concerned about right this moment, though in the long run it was necessary. They would need their own regimen supply, not be tied to Black for it, because she knew it would chafe Castle to have to bow and scrape to his father. They couldn't - she didn't know how much more she could compromise for this, though she'd do anything at all if it meant keeping Castle alive. She shivered and rubbed her arms.

"You sure you're warm enough?"

"Promise. Thank you." The bathroom was muggy with heat in what she assumed was now the peak of the day, but she couldn't be sure. She hadn't found any outside windows yet, let alone the damn front door. "Did Deleware lead you through the compound?" she asked.

He went stiff. "Why?"

"I still don't know how to get _out_ of here."

"Oh," he murmured. He lifted his head and scanned the walls like he could see through them, turned slowly in the space, closing his eyes. He must be picturing it. "We came through the other side."

"The women's side?"

"The what?"

"It was a sultan's palace during the height of the Ottoman Empire. Didn't you do your background research?" He gave her a flashing frown; she shrugged it off and kept going. "Women's harem on that side, this side was for the sultan and his sons."

"Shit."

"That's where I was at first - over there-"

"In the _harem's_ side?"

"Castle."

"Let me remind you that I am not okay with this. With any of this-"

"Focus for a second. If the door to the outside world is over there - or at least the one they use to usher in prisoners - then that's where we need to go."

"Why?"

"Because three men stormed in _here_ looking for me, and as soon as you get the regimen, we need to find a place to hide out until Mitchell comes. The cameras are down, and probably for a while if what you told me about the server is true, so we'd be unseen on that side."

"The harem side."

"Until Mitch gets here. We need a place that will be away from the action, hopefully."

"They'll use infrared to paint the target," he said. "We'd decided no bombing, no mortars, but the ground assault will be violent. Still, our biggest threat is inside these walls, Kate."

"So we'll go the last place he'd look for me," she said, certain. "The holding cell."

"Holding cell." Castle scraped a hand down his face and closed his eyes; he looked like he ached all over, like every word she uttered was a body blow. And she cared, she did; it mattered that she was hurting him. But they just didn't have time to cater to it right now.

"Did Black say when it would be here? The injection," she prompted.

"Within the hour." He opened his eyes and looked at her. "Okay. Draw me a map and I'll meet you there next. The holding cell."

She nodded, grateful he'd agreed. She didn't think she could go on hunting down mercenaries; she wasn't that person. She was a murdered woman's daughter - being the murderer threatened to collapse her world.

With his black t-shirt laying lightly over her shoulders, she squatted down to the stone floor and began arranging a schematic of the compound with trinkets they'd pulled out of the armoire.

It was time to get out of here.

* * *

><p>"Where did you go?"<p>

Castle stepped inside the server room and dispassionately watched his father's twisted features. Now that they had a plan that included _retreat_, he felt calmer. "Beckett needed a shirt."

"Beckett needed a shirt. Is that because I have three men missing?" Black hissed. He'd been overseeing two men jury-rigging a regular CPU to act as a back-up server, but Castle had seen the damage. It'd be hours and the CPU was exactly formatted for it. None of these mercs were IT specialists, and Castle had the feeling he had slit the throat of the only man able to make these kinds of repairs - Deleware.

"Might be," he said nonchalantly. "But you want me with you? Then you can't do anything about her."

"My hands are - so to speak - tied," Black said. Acid dripped in his voice, as well as a sense of irony that Castle didn't get. He was afraid to know what it meant - his father's hands being tied.

"They are. Because anything happens to her and you're done."

"Mutually assured destruction, then," his father mused. His eyes were studying, roving over Castle's face as if hunting for some flaw, some weakness to exploit. "I take her out, you take me out."

Castle didn't want his father to know how tenuous the deal was, how vital that nothing happen to Beckett. He pretended he spoke from a place of power, but he had nothing if Black truly wanted to ruin him. The gun to Beckett's head would always bring him to his knees. He'd do anything.

Still, he bluffed like crazy and hoped his conviction won the day. "And if you're thinking you'll do something to her down the road, think again. I'd never inject myself with your damn serum if she wasn't here to make me. Your super spy? Finished. I'd rather let my blood eat holes in my brain. Just to fucking spite you when you're gone."

His father looked murderous. He'd never seen that formidable loathing directed at himself before and he wondered if he'd done it - pushed him too far - broken him.

Well, good. Because Castle himself was well and truly broken.

"I don't think you understand what's at stake here," Black began, his normally bland voice rising in pitch and tenor. "I have the power to _make_ you."

"No, you don't understand. Whatever you had before, that's gone. Beckett is the one who makes me. Better, more. If I serve my Agency and this country at all, it's at her side, it's for the hope of being with her. That is the true power, that is the power to remake the whole world."

Black stared at him and all of the sudden, that fierce tempest in his twisted face was bridled. He let out a sigh and turned his head to one of the men in the room. "Take him."

Take-?

Castle grunted in surprise when the needle jabbed into his thigh, the hot rush of pain slicing through his veins as the injection spread. He lashed out, swinging his fists and throwing off the men as they crowded him, but already he felt the drug working fast, dragging him down.

"Enough to tranq an elephant," his father murmured. "You just need time, Richard. I can give you the time it takes to forget her. The training. You can be what you were."

"_No_," he growled, but the world was slurring towards him, rising up to meet his face.

He was gone.

* * *

><p>Beckett paced the narrow holding cell and rubbed her arms briskly. She couldn't help but check the cameras in the corners obsessively, but the little red lights never came on.<p>

She knew without looking that it was twenty minutes past their scheduled meeting time. But she also knew that this one had to be flexible because Castle couldn't be exact about when Black would give him the regimen. He'd promised to come find her the moment the injections went in, and even though he would only have about thirty minutes before it dragged him straight under, she didn't doubt him.

Castle would always find his way to her; he'd always get to her no matter the drugs in his system or the countries between them. Even things not in his power would still be bent to his considerable force of will.

So she gave him the twenty minutes. And then it was thirty.

And then she'd been stuck inside the holding cell for an hour and it was no longer faith, it was foolishness.

Castle wasn't coming - Black had somehow stopped him.

Beckett checked the safeties on the two handguns she held, holstered one in her waistband at her hip. She pulled the knife from its sheath and gripped it, testing the weight and the stickiness of the rubbery plastic, and then she went to the door.

The holding cell was quiet and narrow and too empty. She pushed open the door and leaned her eye towards the crack, paused to listen and wait and be cautious.

Be smart, Beckett. He was depending on her.

They had two hours before Mitchell and his team breached the compound and she had little doubt they would. When that happened, Castle couldn't be anywhere near Black or his life was in jeopardy and this was all for nothing.

She took a steadying breath and slipped out into the empty hallway. Just as before, when she'd been haunted by Deleware's guarding presence, no one else was in this section. The element of surprise was crucial to her survival.

The women's area was still in half-light, the emergency beams blue and barely illuminating the section. She found the wooden door that led into the courtyard and again she paused, listening to the sound of her heartbeats too loud in her head. She had to breathe and control the pulse of blood, had to channel it, had to push down every noise clamoring in her for panic and fear and disaster.

And then she opened the door into the strange sunlight, keeping to the shadows under the archway, staring out across the way.

The courtyard looked whitewashed in the sun. Even Deleware's body was a brilliant shadow overlaid with darker stripes, the brutality of it lost to the effusion of light. The orange tree was redolent with citrus and green, and the fountain leapt and played with water.

She slid under the archway towards the north side, taking the corner quickly to avoid her exposure in the gaps between arches. She was moving through the shadows when her shirt got snagged on something; she had to step back and unhook it, realized she'd bypassed a portcullis without noticing it.

The latticed gate had been lowered years ago to cover the courtyard exit.

An exit was right here. Beckett glanced behind her, scanning the yard and the happy fountain, and then she studied the portcullis, the fancy iron gate that the sultan had installed to allow larger deliveries and dignitaries an entrance. Before coming down here, she'd read that the island's king had once paraded elephants through the compound and now she knew _how._

If she could grab Castle, then they might be able to exit through this way. Or at least hide for a few hours, until the worst was over. Usually behind the portcullis was a gateway to the outside world, but the CIA - presumably - had boarded it up somehow, made it look like a solid wall. But peering through the tightly laced metal slats, she could see a space and what looked like tunnel.

Could they raise and lower the portcullis?

It was, at least, an idea. More than she'd had before. But first she had to find Castle and get him away from his father.

She hoped, selfishly, that Black had already injected Castle with the serum, but if he _had_ then there was no way Kate could wake him in time to get him out of here.

She left the portcullis and the courtyard, and she entered through the baize door - right into the hands of his mercenaries.

* * *

><p>They brought her sweaty and flushed and bleeding into the room and Black rippled like a leaf had dropped onto the surface of his very still, very deep water. The dead look in his eyes when he turned his gaze on her spoke everything.<p>

The soldiers shoved her into the only chair in the room, started wrapping duct tape around her arms, pressing her back against the rungs. She flexed and stretched as much as possible, but when they moved to tape her legs, she couldn't help kicking one in the face for what he'd done to her in the hallway.

He cursed even as he gushed blood; her foot throbbed and ached at the knuckle where the side of her big toe had caught his jaw or a tooth. She grimaced and the mercenary glowered, smacking her ankle bone hard into the wooden leg of the chair.

It stung so badly she had to blink through the choke of tears in her throat, but she realized Black had said nothing, either way. He was barely looking.

Her weapons were dropped one after the other to the bare wooden table pushed up to the wall, as if the presence of these instruments were somehow being lodged in evidence against her. Black watched the movements of his underlings - the four men it'd taken to subdue and bind her - but Kate watched Castle.

He wasn't even tied up.

Her husband was sprawled unconscious over an army cot with one foot perilously close to the edge. His mouth was open to breathe, his hair flopping into his eyes in that way he hated but she adored. He looked little boy and fallen soldier in one and with every rise of his chest and expansion of his lungs, hers did the same.

Was it the regimen or something else? Either way, he hadn't seen it coming. Otherwise, he'd have put up a fight and come to her.

She saw movement at her periphery and turned her head in time to see Black withdrawing one of those ubiquitous silver cases. The regimen. He unzipped the hard metal and dug a syringe out of the black foam. His gestures were tidy and efficient; he'd done this so many times before.

Here was her answer then; Black was giving him the regimen now.

She kept her mouth shut so she wouldn't break his concentration, wouldn't distract him from their mutual goal, and the four armed men left the room with disgruntled mutterings about their _job well done_. _No respect_, she thought she heard, and she filed it away somewhere, thinking to use it later.

Turn his men against him.

Something.

She needed anything she could get.

Black prepared the syringe, giving none of the theatrics she might have expected from Castle - no squirting a little bit onto the tip, no raised eyebrows, no last look at her as if to say, _here goes nothing._

Black did his job and he did it without warning.

The injection went into Castle's thigh much like an epi pen - one quick stab and the plunger pushed by Black's thumb all the way down. And then it was over, done, and Black was pulling it out and tossing the needle towards the table. He said absolutely nothing to Beckett, like she didn't even exist, but he took the handle of her knife blade and slammed the butt against the pills he'd laid out.

They crushed up fine and gritty and Black swept them off into his palm, moved to hover over his son. Castle's mouth was already open and Black dusted the grains off his hand; Kate could imagine them coating Castle's tongue where they'd be absorbed into the blood stream quickly. She'd never thought of that before, but seeing the way Black did it all without pause, she knew he must have done it like this so many times.

When Rick was a child, had he petulantly avoided the shots, the pills, the daily life? Had he stomped off to his room or made his handlers chase him through the grounds of some training facility? She'd never been able to picture the two of them together, father and son, but this moment now...

Here was his father, offering salvation, forcing it if necessary. His father was going to make it happen no matter what Castle might choose.

And how was Kate Beckett any different from John Black? She'd ripped Castle's choices away from him when she'd gone to his father for the treatment, for help, for the secrets of the regimen. Of _course_ she had known that Castle couldn't help but follow, of course she'd been betting on it.

She'd been planning this moment right here since she'd heard the drowning rattle of Castle's breathing under her ear, the way he was drowning in his own lungs.

This was where she'd always meant for them to be.

She had just never been able to see what would happen next, what came _after_ Castle got the regimen.

This had always been the end.

* * *

><p>He was surprised by the feel of a blade in his thigh. Surprised to be stuck like a pig. Surprised even to open his eyes against the heavy weight and the bitter taste in his mouth.<p>

Rick turned his head, mouth working to push his tongue around that taste, and his vision caught and held on his wife.

She was a flame, lighting up the world. How beautiful to find her sitting beside his bed. Was he sick? He felt that pressed down beat of his heart, like the earth was too heavy on him. But her face was twisted up, contorted as their gazes met, a whisper of agony, and then he saw his father standing behind her. Black _towered_ over her.

"He steal your power, baby?" he slurred.

But his eyelids drooped and held, and nothing could bring them up again.

* * *

><p>Kate held her breath but he didn't wake again, if that could even be called wakefulness. Oh, but the love on his face when he saw her. She adored that look, felt stronger and in control and so powerful to see that look, how he oriented just to her.<p>

Black had seen; she was certain of that. She'd sensed the way his whole body had gone rigid when Castle's eyes fell to her and never moved away. It must grate on Black; he must despise her in the darkest and deepest parts of him - the places he ignored and said didn't exist.

He had the capacity for it; she didn't doubt that. But could that be used against him?

She was caught, and in being caught, so was Castle. Trapped. Just as Castle had druggedly noted, Black had all the power. She'd done that to her beautiful husband all in the space of a weekend and she was tired of being his weakness, tired of being the one who got them in serious, life-threatening trouble.

She was duct-taped to a chair in front of Castle's bedside where he was guaranteed to be unconscious for another six hours or so. Maybe less if she could get to him, get something in him. She didn't think it was a true unconsciousness, only that he got so tired his mind closed down on him, but say four hours of deep sleep.

They didn't have four hours. They had an hour and forty-five minutes before Mitchell breached the compound with his strike team and although Black kept calling up more men from some mysterious place, she had no doubt that Mitchell would win in the end - and that it would be violent.

Black couldn't possibly think time was on his side. She couldn't believe he didn't know about the strike team. Why else would he have knocked Castle unconscious, strapped him to a bed, and injected him with the regimen?

Because he knew they were running out of time, he had made a grab for the power and he was wielding it like the cold bastard he was.

Beckett pressed her arms against the duct tape, searching for less resistance, but she was effectively bound. She shifted her feet on the chair to find leverage, and Black turned swiftly to look at her, his eyes roaming the bondage, checking.

He was afraid of her.

The thought startled her so badly that she would have jerked right out of the chair if she hadn't been taped to it, though it did rock to one side.

Black was _afraid_ of her.

Was he?

His eyes traveled up and flicked over hers but they no longer held all that cool, remote detachment. She felt stronger just seeing it, even bound to a damn chair, knowing that something about her set him ill at ease.

Castle might not have understood what he had said to her, but he'd understood what he'd been seeing.

Power plays. And in referencing their conversation one day at her father's cabin, sitting around the kitchen table and trying - both of them - to be less controlling people, Castle had given her the ticket out of here.

Or at least to a standoff. Which was infinitely more appealing than being tied to a chair and seeing the walls fall down around her while her husband slept.

Castle was right. This was a negotiation - a power play - and if she took her power back, then she had all she needed to set them free.

A negotiation. She had something Black wanted, he had something she wanted, and Castle - well, they both knew that Castle would do anything for _her_.

For her.

She had the power.


	7. Chapter 7

**Close Encounters 14**

* * *

><p>"You're too quiet," Black remarked.<p>

It took Beckett a moment to withdraw her great concentration on the plan and focus on him again. She hadn't meant the shift of focus to be quite so intimidating, but Black took it as such and his hand found one of the guns left on the table.

They were alone. An hour before the strike team would start raining fire down on this place, and Black had sent his men away. Probably to set up offensive positions, ambushes, to shore up whatever breaches there were in the compound's island defenses.

Either way, they were alone.

And she had an hour with a man who was afraid of her. Maybe not respectful of her, maybe that wasn't it. But he _thought_ he knew what she was capable of and he felt the need for protection from her.

She'd been building her case, piece by piece, laying out the evidence in her head just as she might on a timeline. Just as she might on the floor of her living room, the elements of the case coming together into one dominant story.

This was her story to tell, and this was her interrogation.

She had the power.

"Too quiet? Is there such a thing when it comes to me?" she said in return.

Black's face flinched with with what was either involuntary amusement or horror. No doubt that she knew _his_ mind enough to make such a comment.

"I could talk if you like," she continued. He didn't backpedal physically, but she knew the signs even on a man like Black; she saw the way his eyes shuttered and closed down, the flush of skin in his fight or flight response. He couldn't help it. He was wary of her and he knew she had something cooking.

"Talk or don't talk," he said, shrugging as if it didn't matter to him. "I have what I want."

"Castle? Oh, John. You don't have him," she said, soothingly. A smile on her lips.

And oh, it was true. It was true. Black could never have him. That truth alone was power, knowing that even if Castle did need his father's knowledge of the regimen, Castle didn't need his father. Would never. He was a man beyond Black's reach.

"That is the name you gave yourself, right?" she continued. "John. Blank enough, uncharacteristic of anything. He told me your name - or the name he had for you - that first night I met him."

First night, first case, first week. She'd had him then. She hadn't trusted it because she hadn't done anything to deserve it, but that was really the only thing she _could_ trust. That it had nothing at all to do with her, but with him. Something in Castle longed for her in the same way the dark and twisted places in her clung to him - they were the same in this.

Black remained oblivious - seemingly so. He was standing at the wooden work table and she saw he'd pulled out a tablet, probably something connecting him to the defense system or the mercenaries he'd hired.

Mercenaries. Black hadn't even one loyal man other than Deleware.

And they'd taken that from him as well.

"John," she said quietly. Her voice was strong. She spoke like she was inside the 12th Precinct, sitting at the table in interrogation room 1, all she surveyed under her domain.

His face didn't turn towards her, but she saw the unconscious movement of his fingers going still at her softly-spoken call.

"You might not come when I call, but he does," she said.

Black turned his head on his neck to look at her, like a vulture hunched over roadkill, his eyes dark with death-intentions. "As much as it pains me."

Oh, yes. Yes. He was playing along. She _had_ him.

Kate turned her face to the bed and let her eyes make love to him, Castle, her husband. She breathed him in even from a four foot distance; she adored him. And then she called his name. It was risky to base everything that came on this one demonstration, but Castle had _just_ opened his eyes. He would again. For her.

"Rick," she murmured. The voice he knew, the voice that had woken him at night for a run because she couldn't help needing forward movement, the voice that had greeted him in a cave when she'd thought it was the end, the voice he responded to.

His fingers twitched.

"Rick, sweetheart, open your eyes." The voice she teased with, the voice he followed into the shower in the morning, the voice in his ear when her hands started to roam and he didn't really want to be watching television anyway.

His mouth closed, opened.

"Rick, love, look at me."

And he did.

For one blazing, heart-stopping moment, his blue eyes were perfectly and completely intent on her.

She smiled and let herself fill up with it. She'd done something unforgiveable, but he still came to her. She was still his, and he'd have her.

"I love you. Go back to sleep," she said, throat closing up, and at her command, he was already sinking under.

* * *

><p>"I'm crazy about him," she started.<p>

Black did flinch at that, though she knew it was the _crazy_ that did it. She wriggled her fingers under the tape, working it looser. She wasn't going to rely on only her words to get them out of this - Castle was the one with the words - but so far the duct tape held firm.

"I'm crazy about him and I know that you know I'd do anything for him," she said. Black's fingers stopped on the tablet, started again. "I've infected him, haven't I? I've made him just as crazy."

Black turned to look at her, one of those droll flicks of his lips that meant he found nothing at all to disclaim. An obvious conclusion.

She knew how he saw her, he'd told her himself in the court yard:_You're going to wreck yourself in a bid for pity or attention so that when my son arrives, he either lashes out at me for your state or he comes crawling straight to you in some misguided messiah complex... Forget the sins of the world, he will crucify himself trying to get to a broken, fallen Kate Beckett._

She'd told Castle that her stunt with the knife at her throat had been a bit of theatre, some blood spilled for drama's sake. Well, now that the stage was set, it was time for the last act.

"When he died," she said. She waited until she thought she had Black's attention. "John, when he died, faked his death, I fell apart. I was more than a mess; I broke. He broke me, doing that to me, faking his death."

"I noticed," Black said dryly. "A couple of drinks and you swallow the bath water."

"And Rick ran straight to my side," she pointed out. She had to tread lightly over her own wounds; she'd thought those places scarred up until today, until she'd faced Castle in their hiding place in the bathroom and found herself yelling at him. She needed absolute mastery here.

Black actually looked at her. "He ruined the whole mission. Though I suppose _now_ it's more in my favor if Bracken is alive, isn't it? I should let the senator take you out and then reclaim my son. Even if he was fighting for his martyred wife, still works for me."

She had to stay in control; she was in charge of this, not him. "I gave you a chance to reclaim him. I had no other choice, but the opportunity was yours. All you had to do was keep him."

"What are you talking about?" he said shortly. She saw he'd asked without thinking.

"Russia. I put him on a helicopter with you and you flew away, never to return."

His jaw tightened. His jaw _never_ tightened. He was the famously remote Agent Black; nothing ever got to him.

But she was. She did. She was getting to him, big time.

"What happened, John? He was supposed to be yours. You had him. How did you let him go? Because the next thing I knew, Rick was crawling into a cave after me, dragging himself across the Russian steppe to save my life, ill-prepared and not even fully recovered and he should never have survived that. But he did. I did. We survived."

Black was being carefully silent, a watchful quiet. He knew now she was working up to something.

"The knife," she said calmly, her eyes on it now for a moment. "Just like that one. I put my own throat to the knife and he-"

"Fucking grabbed it with his own bare hand," Black spit out. His eyes sparked and flamed before her, went out again. He was controlling it, but only barely.

"He would rather it be his own throat," she said quietly. "He's furious with me for it, but you saw how he looks at me, how he comes when I call."

"Damn it."

It was twisting her guts to talk about them like this, ripping out her already mangled heart, but she had to, she had to. This was how Black saw them; this was his vision of their relationship. It wasn't the truth. It wasn't their _love._

Black didn't comprehend love.

She kept going. "It doesn't matter what Rick _thinks_ he'll do. It doesn't matter the promises he's made to you, the deal he has to let go of me and stay at your side. Because he might have every intention of following through, of being the son you deserve, but he won't. He won't."

"He will."

"All I have to do is swallow a little bath water," she said, her voice snaking between Black and the tablet in his hands. He turned his head, almost like he couldn't help it, and stared at her. "I've done it before. All I have to do is lunge for a knife."

"You fucking bitch."

"All I have to do is let one mission go sour, get captured by warlords or extremists. All I have to do is go out for a run at three in the morning without even the dog for defense, and Castle comes. Castle always comes running."

"You conniving-"

"You already knew it," she said, shrugging as best she could in the restraints.

Black breathed hard as he stared at her, but he had no words to combat the picture she'd drawn for him - because it was the only thing that made any sense to him, it was already the vision he had for them.

It wasn't true. _It's not true._ Because they loved each other, they _loved_, and that had changed their lives.

"I want him, and I'll have him whether or not you condone it, whether or not you hold him hostage with some damn pills, whether or not you even _like_ it. I'll have him. And he will always come running. He's here, isn't he? He'll risk his life to be at my side."

Black's hands curled on the edges of the tablet and he set it down, carefully, specifically, making his movements smaller and smaller. Because he needed control over something, she knew. Because he couldn't stand to hear the truth of it.

It wasn't true.

But it was.

"Looks like _you're_ fucked, Agent Black. So a new deal. New terms. Let's talk."

* * *

><p><em>We all get what we want.<em>

He heard it echo in his head, again and again, around and around, _we all get what we want_, and it was her voice, it was her sounds, it was words on her lips, but it couldn't possibly be her.

That wasn't her; she didn't do that.

What, exactly, he couldn't understand. What she didn't do or what she said she was doing or maybe the tone...

The tone was wrong; that wasn't his wife.

And while the words and the wrongness of it swirled around him, they also dragged him down, deeper down, a sea of blackness that was so heavy he couldn't move. None of it made sense, nothing was right, and while he tried - he was trying to fight against it - it wasn't her.

It wasn't his wife.

He didn't know how long it was black, but suddenly a softness stole over him, inch by inch until he was aware of it, of her, of the press of her lips to his forehead and her hair trailing down over his neck and the way her fingers swirled at his jaw and to his ear.

"Rick."

He stretched to meet her, wanted it, that warmth and the cautious tenderness, the woman who loved him, not the other one.

"Rick, I need you to wake up for me."

He was already awake.

* * *

><p>"Hey there, hey, baby, you're awake," she was saying, over and over.<p>

Castle couldn't make the image coalesce. Disjointed and messy, and there was blood.

"Come on, Rick," she said, a touch of her fingers at his cheek. "We don't have much time."

He lifted a heavy hand to her shoulder as she leaned over him and gripped, fisting her shirt. "Kate."

"Yeah, yeah, it's me. Can you sit up? We need to go."

He felt like an elephant had sat on his chest. "Can't move."

"Well, that doesn't help us much here," she said, a trace of irony in her voice that made him open his eyes again. She gave him a raised-eyebrow look that transmitted more than any words, and he struggled to lift himself up against the weight of everything else.

"It's the shot," he said. He rubbed the top of his thigh, his arm tangled around hers, but she didn't shift away from him. "Makes it hard to get... anywhere."

"You've been out of it for almost an hour."

"Huh." Not long at all. She was crowding him, so close that her body filled his vision, and he realized her face was a mess, the black shirt he'd given her had ripped at the neckline, blood dried at her collar. "Kate. You - your - what happened to you?"

"Altercation with his goons," she said shortly. But the incline of her head, that unconscious gesture _towards_ something made him freeze.

And there was his father. Standing at the far side of the room, nonchalantly watching them.

When he'd woken, it was only Kate he'd seen - as usual, his eyes only for her - but now...

"Castle, hold on a second," she said fiercely. "Wait." She pressed her hands at his shoulders to keep him down and it made his head swim, his vision blur, but he couldn't close his eyes. Not when Black was right there. With them - with _her_.

"What is he doing here? What happened? What's going on?"

"We've made a new deal."

_We all get what we want._

"No," he growled, gripping her knee and finding that pressure point immediately, like instinct, going for the nerve. She cringed and he dropped the move, horrified, sick, head swimming. "No. Kate. No, we don't-"

"Trust me. It's-"

"I _don't trust you_," he hissed. "Not when it comes to this. You just - you're always so damn willing to kill yourself, Kate Beckett, that I don't trust you at all." The shock that crawled over her face was damn well worth it, he told himself, and he turned his deadliest look on his father. "Whatever she told you, whatever she said, it doesn't hold for me."

"Damn it, Castle," she gritted out. "Shut the hell up. Black-"

"My deal is with her. She's the one with the power here."

What the fuck.

Castle stared at his father, then he stared at Kate.

She'd been... an altercation and he had a searing memory of seeing her duct taped to a chair, but now. Now she was sitting on the bed with her back to his father and Black himself was just standing in the corner like an obedient watch dog.

"What the fuck did you do?"

* * *

><p>He didn't want his father in here with them; he had things he needed to stay, do, figure out, and that was impossible with this father in the room. Black said nothing, but Kate also said nothing, and that was unacceptable.<p>

"Tell me."

Her eyes were begging him to let it go. To trust her.

How could he? How could he ever trust her with her _own life_? "You don't seem to understand," he rasped. His fingers were tangled in her hair and he knew he was dragging her down, forcing her to bend over him as he tried to hold himself up. "You don't understand. What you do _hurts _me."

"I'm not trying to hurt you, Rick."

"But you are. When you throw your life away, when you give it over to _him._ You're killing me with this shit, Beckett, and I won't let you do it. You hear that, Black? Whatever deal she offered you - if it risks her _life_, I'm not doing it. You'll get nothing from me."

"That is - entirely - the point," his father said. "Now. Enough. Kate, please use your considerable influence to achieve the necessary results. I need to gather some things before we leave."

"We?" Castle roared, but his father was already slipping through the door. It locked behind him. He turned furious eyes back to Kate. "What have you done? What did you _say to him_?"

Kate shook her head, pressed her hand to his cheek. She was crying. Shit, she was crying and he felt messed up, his head killing him and that funny taste in his mouth that he knew was from the pills. He tried to untangle his brutal grip on her hair but he only managed to make it worse, helplessly worse, but now at least she was laughing.

Through tears. She was bringing her hands up to deal with his snared fingers, gently untangling him, her fingers wrapping around his and carrying his palm to the place over her heart. He could feel it beating, a little fast, but steady.

"Please tell me you're not going with him," he whispered.

"No," she murmured. "No, never. I'm not going anywhere with him. And neither are you."

God, the weight. It floated right off him at her words, and he felt his body slump and fall back, his head hitting the mattress, and he had to lay there a second, eyes closed, just breathing. She pressed in closer, her hand at his chest, his still caught to her breast, and he unfurled his fingers against the soft fabric of her shirt, opened his eyes to her.

She was leaning in close over him, and her hand inched up his sternum to tap her fingers against his chin. "I'm sorry, Rick. There's - so much to apologize for and I know it's not even begun, but I understand now. It won't - I'm going to endeavor to be - never mind. Just know that we're both safe. Together. But we're getting him out of here before Mitchell arrives. In about twenty minutes. So, baby, if you get up, that would help us out a lot."

He stared up at her and still couldn't fathom it. "Tell me what's happened."

"We made a deal, him and me. We all get what we want. Everyone lives."

"That's not what I want," he spat out. "I want him dead. I want him_ dead _for this." Castle reached up and fisted his hand in her shirt, hauled himself upright again. Her face was bruised, her cheek looked swollen but that was the previous graze from Deleware; the new blood seemed to be from a gash at her neck - or the knife wound had reopened. It was hard to tell. But for all of that - he laid it at his father's feet. And his father deserved to die.

"Well, then we don't all get what we want," she sighed. Her fingers feathered in his bangs and made his eyes close. He couldn't help tilting his head into her, breathing in the scent of her skin as she hovered close. "You don't get that, Rick, but you do get me. And if this is going to work, I need you get up and move. Come with us back to the plane."

Oh. The plane.

He opened his eyes and lifted his head. She was begging him in every look.

_Trust me._

"I get to keep you," he said again, the gruffness in his voice betraying him. He felt the need to clutch at her but he wouldn't do that. He had one thing to give her right now, one thing she wanted from him, and damn it but it was the hardest.

"You get me," she whispered. "For what it's worth."

"Everything," he said back. Immediate, no hesitation, definite. "You are everything. Help me stand up."

_I'm trusting you._

* * *

><p>Castle swayed beside her and she gripped the back of his pants to hold him up. It'd be funny if it were't so awful, funny if she hadn't been wrangled by four guys in a hallway and dragged in front of his unconscious body while his father did whatever the hell he wanted to his son.<p>

It'd be funny if she hadn't started this whole chain of events, if it wasn't her fault.

"Kate," he said, her named garbled on his tongue. "Kate, can't-"

He pitched forward, his knees like jelly, and she grabbed him again, let out a huffing breath as he knocked her into the wall. The door unlocked - of course his father would choose just that moment to come back - and Black waited on the other side.

"Are you coming?"

Beckett pressed her lips together and lightly patted Castle's cheek to shock him awake. It wasn't that he was asleep; he looked like a child woken too soon from a nap and she bet it was actually quite similar. Deep, restorative sleep had been interrupted and it was going to take him a little while to get fully conscious.

"Castle," she murmured close to his ear. Partly because it grated on Black's nerves, having her so intimate with his son, and partly because she'd been correct: Castle responded to her.

He came when she called.

"Castle." She tugged on his ear, pinched his earlobe. "Castle. Wake up. Time to go."

He grunted and pushed off the wall, eyes fuzzy and mouth turning down at the corners. "Why him?"

"Castle, we're getting him out of here before the strike team lands."

"Ah, strike... team. Right." Castle shook himself like a bear, shivering and drawing up to his full height, suddenly looking so dominant and fierce. "To the plane. Black, after you."

Beckett was impressed. Until Black turned around and headed down the hallway, and Castle slumped against the door, grabbing the frame with a white-knuckled grip. She came up at his side and wrapped her arm at his waist, thinking to help him, but he shook her off.

He was trusting her, but he didn't look happy about it. He was attempting a show of force.

Beckett moved away, unable to help looking back at him, but he was doggedly determined to go it alone. She tried not to hover, moving through the halls after his father's lead, her gun in one hand and the knife in its sheath again. She'd holstered Castle's gun in his shoulder strap as well, but he didn't seem to know it was there.

"Rick?"

"Let me concentrate. I just gotta... concentrate."

"Okay," she murmured, shutting her mouth. The deal wasn't complicated, and she had thought to explain, but every time she looked at him and tried to speak, it wouldn't come.

Castle suddenly grunted and she jerked back to his side. He waved her off, a hand to the wall for balance, and then he put two fingers into his cargo pants pocket, pulled out his phone.

She realized she and Black both were waiting on a wire's edge.

"Castle?"

He squinted and then sighed, handing over his phone. He said nothing, just waited until she'd taken it, and then he rubbed his hand over his eyes briskly, like he was trying to rub out the mist in his vision.

Kate unlocked the phone and read the message, her heart sinking. "They're early. They're going to breach-"

Suddenly the ground shook beneath their feet and plaster rained down over their heads. Black made a snarling comment but Kate reached for Castle, gripped his bicep.

"We have to go," he said.

"We have to go," she nodded. "Castle. The plane. We have to get Black out of here for this to work."

"Still haven't said what," he muttered. Another shockwave rippled around them and Castle grunted, tilting his head back, blinking past dust. "I don't want to do this. I don't want to just let him _go_ after everything."

"Castle," she urged, glancing once to Black to make sure he wasn't too close. She leaned in to her husband and pressed her hand to his shoulder, mouth to his ear. "You injected the tracer, remember? Mitchell can find us again."

He lowered his head and stared at her, his eyes swimming behind that cloud that kept him away from her, kept him dragged down. "Find us again. Again?"

"Shh," she hushed. "Quiet, baby. Just help me get us all out of here first."

"And then?"

"And then we see where it takes us."

"The regimen," he sighed, looking so bitterly disappointed that Kate's heart twisted.

At the edge of her vision, she saw Black nosing too close, too attentive. She stepped back and drew Castle after her with a tug on his thermal shirt. "The regimen, yes. The deal is that we have to go to Black for the regimen."

"I hate him," he said, strangely dispassionately. "I hate him. You're safe, right? I don't think you're safe with him."

She gave Black an arch look - she couldn't help needing to confirm her power - and then she nodded to her husband, pulling him after her down the hall. "Yes. Safe, both of us. So, please, just come with us to the plane and we'll all get out of here alive."

"This is ridiculous," Black said. He looked put out with them both. "This incessant need for affirmation. You've got to be kidding me. I didn't know it was this _bad_, Richard. No wonder you-"

Castle growled and stepped forward, going up against his father and slamming him back into the wall. Beckett winced when Black's head hit the stone, but the man looked like he'd planned it all along, like he'd been fishing for it.

She moved to intercept, hating that she was in the first place, but Black sneered and shoved his son off of him. "I just wanted to see."

Kate paused, realized it had been some kind of test. Probably of how strong Castle was, how much he was with it. What did that mean? What was Black planning?

They were all supposed to get in that plane and fly somewhere south - that was as much as he'd told her - where they'd get a supply of the regimen.

She saw now that Black had something else in mind, a plan was forming behind those icy eyes, but she didn't know what.

And she'd told Castle, so naively, _trust me_.


	8. Chapter 8

**Close Encounters 14**

* * *

><p>Castle rocked on his heels when the explosion shuddered through the hallway; Beckett was forced back into him and he caught her, stupidly pleased with himself for his quick thinking. She righted herself and gave him a swift look. Another blast shook the compound and echoed painfully in the corridors, knocked around in his head.<p>

He felt bad - sluggish and dragged down.

"It's started," Kate sighed at him. "We need to get going."

"No," Black said with a tight grimace, coming back quickly to them. "It's blocked."

"What's blocked?" Castle said, the ground shaking again under the assault. This time it was Kate who caught him.

Black growled and shoved past Castle towards the other end, the _wrong_ end. There was no exit that way.

"Where are you going?"

"Didn't you feel that?" Black said over his shoulder. "Your damn team has collapsed our escape route."

"No," he mumbled. "No, wait. That wasn't the plan..."

"Castle," Kate said insistently.

He started moving, following them, but it was so hard to think. He didn't ever remember the injections being like this. Once when he'd been with Kate, he had gotten out of bed and taken it just in time, and then he had sat in a chair by her bedside, jolting himself awake every few hours, forcing himself to memorize her every breath until she woke and he could join her.

It'd been difficult, and he'd constantly felt the drag of sleep, so alluring, but he'd loved that quiet time of watching her, falling in love with her inside her own bedroom, that sacred place so bohemian and free just like she was in bed.

This was different. His limbs felt like they were weighted down, his chest like it would cave in. Every step down the trembling, beaten hallway was in time with the sluggish thud of his heartbeat. He was trying every trick in the book to keep from just laying his head down, and his mouth was a river of blood from biting his tongue for the awareness of pain.

Collapsed escape route.

Right. Yes. Actually, that had been one of his early ideas, but they'd scrapped it because he'd been certain Black would know they were coming and might drag Beckett off with him towards an escape hatch. He hadn't wanted to incur that kind of damage.

"Wait," he said, feeling the words thickly in his mouth but none of them would come. _Wait, I remembered something. It's not..._

Safe.

Black pushed through a series of doors that led onto another endless hall, and Castle caught Kate's surprised look as they jogged down the corridor. So she hadn't made it this far in her own explorations. He'd studied the maps extensively before he'd pretty much gotten fed up with planning, with waiting, and now he wished the damn injection wasn't screwing with his head.

There was something he should be remembering, some clue. The order of things. The controlled explosives and the timing.

Blow the sultan's entry first. And then the secondary entry which was over-

"Wait!" he shouted. Black had his hand at the green baize door, Beckett moving to go past him into the courtyard, but she paused at his call, turned her head to look at him.

He knew it was coming and he almost didn't catch her in time.

Castle leaped forward, wrapping his arm around her neck and dragging her to the stone floor with him. The explosion went off with a volume and force that beat at his very soul, and he felt Kate breathing hard underneath him - though he couldn't hear her.

Her hands at his cheeks, the slap of a palm and the insistent buzz of white noise in his ears made his eyes open. He saw Kate - wild and panicked, writhing under him - and he realized debris had fallen down around them, that he was pinned.

And Kate beneath him. She was _afraid_. "Your father, your father-"

His ears and vision cleared in a rush and roar, though the ringing was there, and then he felt the heavy stone being rolled off his thigh, the wood beams shifting, and his father was there.

Castle was on his elbows over Kate and she was slithering out from underneath him, holding his head and neck in a weird, awkward way. He grunted and realized they were both speaking, but he couldn't process. He tried to combat the effects of the bomb and the regimen and the damn sedative his father had stuck him with in the server room, clearing his head.

The sedative. Black had done this on purpose. He _knew_ the sedatives that made Castle unbalanced; he'd even apologized to him in the hospital in Turkey when those sedatives had made him delirious.

Black had _wanted_ him more than just a little punch-drunk and tired after the injections; he'd wanted him susceptible. And malleable. Able to be knocked over with a stiff wind.

"Castle," she was calling him. He lifted his head and realized she was trying to get him to crawl under a beam of wood and out to a clear section of hall. The green baize door was gone, ripped off its hinges who knew where, and a fire was burning out in the courtyard.

"Beckett," he said, trying to get to his feet. She grabbed him and hauled him up; they swayed and he took a precious second to close his eyes and feel. Feel his body through the sludge in his brain. "I'm okay. Hips hurt, but I think it's just bruised."

"It'll clear up soon enough," Black said. "But we have to get moving. Your team just destroyed-"

"The women's section," he finished. And then he swung a deadly look at his father. "The _harem_'s apartments. Where you held my _wife_."

"A holding cell, you ungrateful..." Black trailed off, visibly holding his tongue, and he moved down the hall like he was headed for another exit.

Castle reached out and grabbed him by the back of his fancy dress shirt, yanked him back. "You can't go that way. The underground exit is sealed. We already knew about that one."

"There's no other exit," Black said testily. "I am _not _going to be taken in." His eyes cast to Beckett, and Castle stiffened. His father leaned in towards her. "Becket. We had a deal."

"Looks like the deal's off," Castle gloated. "We're stuck. Better just sit down with your hands on your head and wait for the troops."

"That is _not _happening. That cannot happen. Kate."

Castle could hear the frustration crawling in his father's voice; Black had so rarely ever expressed or displayed these emotions that seeing so many now in the last few hours was making an impression.

Black had been pushed to his limits, and hard. And he wasn't to be trusted. No matter what the damn deal was.

Castle gave Beckett a triumphant look, but she averted her eyes, her teeth working at her inside lip so hard that it made her mouth twist.

"There's another way out," Kate said swiftly. "Out here. The elephant door."

And then she plunged through the gaping black maw where the baize door had been and into the flames.

* * *

><p>Beckett didn't flinch.<p>

But she wanted to.

Her skin crawled where the flames got too close, shriveling up under the heat, and though she couldn't hear anything but the fire raging through the courtyard, she knew Castle was at her back.

Kate dodged a falling, flaming branch and realized with horror that the gorgeous citrus tree was now a brilliant and burning orange. A more devastating orange. Castle stumbled into her from behind, catching her around the waist and hauling her away, and she reached back for his arm, attaching herself to him, and steered them towards the elephant door.

The north end of the courtyard was thrown in frightening shadows, the early night mixed with the leaping flames, and both men followed her towards the archway that sheltered the narrow passage between the sections. When she looked, the harem's apartments were strangely intact, but she could see the hungry glow of fire in the barred windows, the way it was eating through the inside like a beast.

"Beckett!"

She nodded towards the archway at Castle's insistent call, felt the smoke thickening in her lungs with every breath. She couldn't help glancing his way, waiting for him to be seized by the paralysis of asphyxiation - her nightmare of pneumonia these last few weeks, but it didn't happen.

He was on the regimen.

In fact, Castle - compared to herself and Black - seemed to have no trouble at all with the smoke clogging the air. Black had unbuttoned his sleeve and pressed his cuff to his nose and mouth, and Beckett now pulled up the hem of her black t-shirt, hunched over instinctively for the cleaner air below.

Castle moved sluggishly and druggedly, but he moved without the same curling-inward, needing-oxygen, starving-for-breath look that she and Black had.

When they darted under the archway, into the closer confines of stone and architecture, the heat redoubled, making her pitch forward into the wall of the corridor, her bruised shoulder flaring with pain. She must have made a sound because Castle grabbed for her, the fierceness of his grip like his force of will, and she opened her mouth to tell them _the portcullis_ only all she could do was cough.

She sank her elbows to her knees, gasping, choking on black, trying to get it out of her lungs. Castle was at her side as if a wall between her and his father, and she closed her eyes in the brief respite, sucking in lungfuls of damaging smoke.

She lifted up when she could, gestured toward the latticed gate. "The portcullis," she croaked.

"A what?" Castle snapped.

"Gate, a gate," she got out, shifting forward to reach for the bars.

Castle slapped her hand away, catching her fingers in his and crushing them. "Metal. It's hot. Don't."

She shook him off and picked up the bottom of her shirt, used it to shield her hand as she rattled the intricate lattice-work of the elephant door. "This has to go up," she rasped, feeling tears in her eyes from the smoke. Over his shoulder she saw Black shifting to stand beside them at the portcullis, his gaze scanning the former entry with shrewd appraisal.

She knew she could count on him to get them all out of here. Or to get Castle at least, and she could count on Castle bringing her with him, so really - they were going to make this happen.

"It's filled in," Castle shouted. The roar of flames was so intense that it was all she could hear, though her husband's voice seemed to burn past that, as if he was a force of nature himself.

And maybe like this, on the regimen, he was.

"There's a-" She choked off to catch her breath, gestured towards the corridor she'd spied earlier, the guard house or whatever it was. "Have to get through to there."

Castle leaned in close enough to nearly press his cheek to the bars, but he stopped just short, eyeing the space. "Yeah. I see. Should be a lever or ratchet, a wheel turns the gears?"

She nodded back and caught his eyes, and that sudden clear burn of connection between them, of working together to get the job done, in sync - it pushed clean air in her lungs and made her stand up straighter.

They could do this. They had to do this.

She moved to the left, skimmed her fingertips along the stones, searching for a hidden piece or a dislodged bit of masonry, not sure it would help but knowing they needed to get that gate _up_.

Then she heard a fantastic moan of metal that made the whole wall shake under her hands and she turned incredulously back towards Castle.

Her husband had squatted down, both hands slipped into the bottom rung of latticework, and he was _hauling the gate up._

Like it was a damn garage door. Like it hadn't been sealed and forgotten for a hundred years.

Black only stood back and watched.

The muscles in Castle's back flared and went taut, his thighs were hard cords straining at the limits of his skin, and his biceps seemed to burst in ragged knots of effort. Sweat ran down his face and dampened his thermal shirt, his eyes jerked to hers in a kick to the gut of that electric connection.

And the gate was moving up.

Beckett spun around and scanned the court yard for help, a prop, something to shove under the gate and hold it up because she was damn well not getting stuck under that thing when it came back down, and she sure as hell wasn't going to leave Castle on the other side of it, holding it open for them.

She spotted the stone, crumbling fountain in the center of the courtyard, shriveling in the flames, and she took a cleansing, hopeful breath, prepared herself to run for it.

But first.

Kate turned and touched her husband's shoulder, saw his eyes track to hers. He was vibrating with energy, grunting with the effort of forcing the gate up, and she knew he couldn't hold it for long, no matter how super.

"I'm getting a block," she told him. "To prop it up." She nodded her head towards the center of the courtyard and he groaned.

"Beckett." His eyes roved wildly over the flames, but then he came back to her with something a little more controlled. "Be fast."

"Stay brave," she murmured, and dragged a kiss along his straining bicep where she could reach.

And then she ran forward into the flames.

* * *

><p>He couldn't hold it any more. He couldn't hold it. It was going to crash back down and he'd be too weak with the damn sedative to do it again and he didn't know if Beckett was making it or if she was engulfed in flames or <em>what<em> and he just wanted to sleep.

He wanted it to be dark and cool in their bedroom and he could curl up around her long frame, his arms curling around her instead of trembling under the searing heat of metal, the weight of the ancient gate bearing him down to death.

"I'm here, Castle. Here. Here." The brush of her body against his set him trembling and then she and Black were wedging a piece of the stone fountain under the portcullis's metal bottom. Her hand came back to his knee in command and he let the gate ease from his fingers, felt the moment the stone was given the load to bear.

"Don't have long," she rasped, eyeing the broken chunk of masonry. It seemed like it would hold, but she was right - the gate could grind it to dust too.

"You first. Go, go, go," he shouted. He shook out his hands, stinging from the cut, from the knife wound that had reopened and was now thickening under the blood-stained bandage. Beckett was already sliding in under the portcullis, and Castle kept his eyes on her until she lurched to stand on the other side.

"Now Black," she said, her eyes on him and desperately pleading.

He narrowed his eyes but had to accept the terms. Beside him, his father was already scraping through the grime at the side closest to the chunk of fountain, his belly exposed to the gate's metal base.

All it would take...

But of course, Kate would be on that side and him on this and that had been why she'd done it like this. So he wouldn't kick the stone loose and let the gate down on his father.

When Black was through and just beginning to stand, Castle ducked down and went on his belly, pushing himself through by his burning hands, the space almost too narrow for him. He kept getting distracted by every little movement his father made, panic tripping through him that this was it, this was the moment his father had chosen to hurt her, while he was wriggling under a damn gate.

But when he got to his feet on the other side, they were both waiting on him.

Black had wadded up his dress shirt in front of his face and it made him look deadly, calculating, like Castle couldn't know what was going on behind those cold, lifeless eyes. He still had that bag strapped across his back, containing who knew what he needed to rebuild his little empire, and Castle felt the animosity and disdain rolling off his father.

Maybe Black had finally turned the corner from wanting to redeem his son to wanting to have it over with. He'd welcome that. A chance to fight him, man to man, and have it over with finally.

"Let's go," Kate urged, her hand reaching out for his. He winced when their palms touched, felt the tender flesh where his was burned meeting the rough scrapes where hers was bloodied, but neither of them let go.

The narrow area seemed to have been a station for guards at the glorious height of the Ottoman rule, and just like she had predicted, there was a door at the far end for the soldiers to change shifts more easily.

Castle shoved on Black to lead the way and they all crowded in close to make it through the narrow passage inside the walls of the sultan's compound.

Kate's fingers laced through his, her body vibrating and alive in front of him, and if he didn't taste the smoke on his tongue or feel the strain of muscle in his back or need the wall at his shoulder to keep him upright against the sedative, Castle could almost be excited.

Almost.

Following his wife into the dark.

* * *

><p>Kate felt Castle close at her back, his presence alone enough to rub her tender skin raw. Good and bad both. She'd been sorting through the rubble of the fountain, finding the largest piece to use, when a portion of the orange tree had fallen on her. But it'd been fast.<p>

It'd been fast and she'd gotten out from under it before it could bring her to her knees, but still her back itched and irritated at her skin. She needed this shirt off and she needed a waterfall of cool water, but what she got was her husband needing to be close to her.

Which she could handle. Which she - in some ways - craved. So she didn't shrug him off.

Ahead of her, Black tested out the darkness with his feet and an elbow, the other hand clamped around the strap of his backpack. It was strange to see him - or the outline of him - so smudged and ragged, no longer put together and neat, no longer in control. He'd come undone these last few hours, and the malevolence he'd always leveled at her now had, in some small part, also been aimed at Castle.

She was beginning to worry about that. She needed Black to be as invested in getting Castle out alive as she was, or otherwise she couldn't trust him for shit.

And she needed to trust him.

Had to. The deal had bound the three of them so tightly...

But she couldn't think about what came next, about the plane ride or having to somehow sleep while he was too close or what happened once they got the regimen; the only thing she could focus on right now was getting out of this compound.

The stone walls of this passageway were twice as thick as they'd been inside the sultan's apartments, and every blast and explosion and sound of gunfire was muffled. The battle felt removed, and she wondered if any of those mercenaries out there - however many Black had called in for reinforcements - were truly fighting back or if they'd turned and run.

Castle nudged at her and she picked up her feet; their laced hands brushed agonizingly against the still bleeding wounds from the rubble, but she could feel his blood and the heat of his skin from the burns and knew his was worse.

Still they didn't let go.

Story of their life together, clinging despite the hurt.

Black paused and she realized the corridor had ended at a juncture, the far west wall of the compound rimming the sultan's apartments. She pointed north, to their right, and felt Castle doing the same, the two of them in sync, and Black glanced at them in askance.

"South is more compound," she explained. "That's north."

"She's right," Castle scraped out. He sounded exhausted, like it was effort just to speak, and she wondered if this was always how the injections worked with him.

Black followed their suggestion, heading carefully through the darkness. Maybe his sense of direction was just as muddled as Castle's was when he was off the regimen.

Kate had already pulled out her stolen phone to help light the way, barely, but Castle didn't seem to have the presence of mind to do the same. She supposed it was a better idea not to waste the battery on that, in case they needed it later, but now she was beginning to be worried about him.

He'd been unconscious _before_ Black had administered the injection. So he'd been struck unconscious or sedated somehow. Why hadn't that occurred to her until now? He didn't do well with sedatives; something about his misshapen blood cells made the sedatives affect him differently.

"Castle," she murmured back to him. He stumbled and his shoulder brushed her wrenched one; she grunted and lost her footing. "Castle?"

"Drained. Just... he knew which sedative would mess me up. Has a bad reaction to the regimen."

"You gonna make it?"

"Have to."

Answer enough. She kept her hand in his and knew the pain was keeping him sharp, as it did for her. The stone walls echoed with their harsh breathing, but at least here the air was clear enough to get a breath.

So Black had given his son the sedative he knew would make Castle unable to fight back as effectively. And Black had also known the strike team was coming.

Black had a plan in place. Beckett just hoped she could figure it out before it was too late.

* * *

><p>Castle sucked in a deep breath of night air, tasted the smoke on it anyway. The stars were vibrant here and the scattering of trees were at least a hundred feet from the wall. They'd come out of a side door that he'd had to shove open with brute force, Beckett and his father helping as they scraped away years worth of rubble and detritus.<p>

Beckett had her fist in the back of his shirt, helping to keep him steady. He was going to topple the moment he could stop, but he couldn't stop right now. Black was adjusting the backpack over his shoulder and scanning the dark horizon, but Kate was looking to Castle for the lead.

The plane. Right.

"It was on the east side," he admitted. They'd have to circle around the burning women's apartments to get to the landing strip. "This way."

She gripped him harder when his feet didn't want to unstick from the ground even as he tilted to the right; she caught his hip with her other hand and he felt the loose and rubbery response of his limbs. Black was being so careful not to look at them that Castle knew he was studying his son's abilities minutely. It didn't make him feel good; it made him feel hunted.

Beckett kept her grip at his side but once he got into the rhythm of the movement, his walking got steadier. The pain was mental, just a signal from his brain telling him he'd reached certain limits, but he could push past that without much trouble. It was the sedative that was really screwing him up. He supposed it had something to do with the capacity his blood had for carrying oxygen and whatever other drugs were in his system, but what it meant in the real world was that he was weak and feverish and his head hurt enough that he wanted to sit down and stay there.

Kate steered him away from a fallen log at the break and they slipped into the cool shade of the trees, unanimously, wordlessly seeking their cover as they skulked the fringes of the compound.

"Where is Mitch coming in?" she murmured to him. "Where is he setting up his center of command?"

Black was in front now, trailblazing, and Castle was pleased to hear how damn _loud _the man was in the forest - despite all his debonair and finely honed skills, his years of harping on his son for _one_ misplaced footstep.

"Plan was southwest, hit the main compound hard," he said back. He realized now that even through the effects of the sedative, he felt stronger in his body and in his _lungs_ than he had in years. Years of this. Years of not quite being up to speed, not quite making it, years of feeling at the end of the day like he needed to sit down and do nothing, years of waking up in the morning and wishing for another two hours of sleep.

He didn't feel like that now. His body would serve him, not him serving his body, a slave to it.

No, maybe he wasn't a slave to it, but he'd be a slave to Black now. To the regimen.

They were slipping Mitchell's grasp and flying out of here on the plane he stole to get in, and then what came next? He had no idea, but Kate had said, _trust me_. And he knew - he knew - she wanted a life with him as much as he did. Even though she'd done some seriously damaging and crazy and frustrating things to secure that life, he was going to have to believe that she wouldn't sacrifice it now. She wanted their dreams of the future just as much as he did, and he had to believe that.

He just...

didn't.

He didn't believe she'd stop now. She'd come this far, broken him this much, that if they left here now without some kind of guarantee of the regimen in her hands, he was afraid of what she'd do.

The trees whispered over his head and the firefight still chattered towards the southwest, away from where they were headed. But if he were Mitchell, securing that plane would be one of the first things he did. It hadn't been on the original plan, of course, but Mitch knew it was there, Mitch wasn't stupid. Mitch would be _on_ that tarmac, guarding the plane - the last escape route.

Castle kept his mouth shut though.

He _wanted_ Mitchell to find them there.

Force Black's hand.

He wanted these games over and done with; he wanted a showdown.


	9. Chapter 9

**Close Encounters 14**

* * *

><p>When the Castle led them got to the far end of the landing strip, Beckett's stomach twisted. His father cast her a wary look, narrowing his eyes.<p>

She'd forgotten. How could she have forgotten?

But Castle - he'd known they were here. He'd let it come to this.

Mitchell had posted a contingency of men at the plane and they ringed it with a determination and steadfastness that she knew from so many missions. The men standing opposite her were her friends, men she'd served with and fought for and who had always had her back.

"Castle," she said, gutted out by the sight.

"We're not going anywhere," Castle answered. "Not with him."

"No," she whispered. "You don't understand-"

"Then fucking explain it to me," he roared.

She stumbled back, her fist releasing his shirt. She opened her mouth but there was nothing to explain - he knew what she was doing, _had_ to do, that they needed the regimen.

"That's what I thought. This ends now."

"Richard-"

"You shut up," Castle growled. He moved out from under the trees to the dirt and gravel of the landing strip, aiming for their rescue squad still a hundred yards off.

Kate stood in the newly-fallen starlight and watched him leave cover, hands up, already calling out his identifying code to the sentries. There had to be another ten guys on the other side of the cargo jet, and a few she didn't see who were sweeping the trees.

"Castle," she hissed. She sensed Black at her side, shifting away, and the hair rose on the back of her neck. "Castle, please."

Even as the soldier stood at ease, weapon pointed to the sky, Beckett missed it when it happened. She hadn't expected it - not this. She should've seen it coming - she'd known there was a plan, that Black was going to move against her the second he got his chance - but not this.

Not this. Never this.

Black lunged for Castle before his son could make it completely clear of the underbrush, tackling him with a force so brutal that Beckett heard the sound of her husband's breath leaving his lungs. She lurched forward in horror, reaching for her weapon and drawing it, but Black had the gun to Castle's guts and an arm around his neck, restricting his throat.

"No," she gasped. "No. What are you doing?"

"Back the fuck off, Beckett," his father growled at her. "I don't want you. I want him."

"You wouldn't kill him," she choked. Would he?

"He's pumped so full of the regimen that I could shoot him in the stomach and it would fucking _hurt_ but it wouldn't kill him. I could get him to my facility before he even went into shock."

"No," she groaned, taking another half-step towards them. "No. Please, don't."

"Move ahead of us," Black snarled. "Move, Beckett. Now. Towards the strike team."

She studied the scene, the soldiers, the weapons, her husband struggling for air, the gun digging in under his ribs. A gut shot. It would be agony but he'd survive...

Only if Black flew him immediately to his own facility. Could Beckett get him medical attention fast enough?

No.

And not only that, Black had more of those stabilizers and probably other elements to the regimen that she didn't even know about. Black had _answers _to all of this; he was in the unique position of having the regimen entirely under his control - and now this situation as well.

Black knew he could save Castle's life, but Beckett could only get her husband hurt worse.

"Okay," she said slowly. "Okay. Just..."

"Walk ahead of us," Black said, calmer now. "Stay between us and them."

She stepped slowly towards Castle, but Black released the safety on the gun with an audible click. She backed off, circling the two men slowly.

"Keep your weapon in hand, at your thigh," Black said. His voice was steady; he had control of this. He'd _always_ had the power. She was a fool to ever think otherwise.

"Kate," Castle garbled. She gave him a quick, frantic look and saw the way his eyes bulged, his hands gripping Black's neck and clawing. Black knew - must know - the lack of oxygen was worse for him than anyone else. The sedative he'd given his son had made him just weak enough to take down, and restricting his air supply was more damaging to him than a regular man.

And Kate had set everything in motion, Kate had handed him the escape route. And now Black was going to take her husband.

She scanned the soldiers, the plane, the landing strip, but she had nothing. Absolutely no way out of this.

"Walk," Black demanded.

So she began to walk towards the plane.

* * *

><p>He couldn't breathe.<p>

He couldn't think; he couldn't breathe. Beckett walked slowly ahead of them with her weapon at her side but the strike team was head of them, waiting and cautious, alert to the new danger but unable to help. Unwilling to raise a gun against them.

He couldn't breathe. His limbs were running to water, his chest tight, and panic was scrabbling hard for a foothold in his ribs. He dug his fingers into his father's arm - _his father_ - but he couldn't find purchase, couldn't rip him away.

He'd been so fucking cocky, so full of the regimen that he'd felt invincible. Shielding Kate from that explosion, lifting the gate, forcing open that old side door - all designed to make him weaker and weaker, to drain what energy he'd built up in the two hour rest he'd gotten before he'd been awakened.

He couldn't breathe. His father - his father was - he couldn't _breathe_ and the feeling of drowning rose up in him again, hard and fast and tight, making his limbs mushy and inoperable.

"Stand up," his father growled. "I could fucking shoot her and no one would save her. You understand me?"

He groaned through it, tried to straighten up, clawing for air. His father was giving him just enough for a gasp before choking him again, and in moments they would be nearing the plane. The squad of guys had circled them, weapons pointed equally at Beckett and himself and Black, but Black wouldn't let her put down her gun. It was making his team all nervous, which he saw was Black's intent, and more than one of the guys yelled at Beckett to _put the fucking gun down_!

He shook with the effort of staying conscious, of sucking greedily for air, but his father jerked him towards the side door of the plane, low to the ground. It would take an effort to haul himself up, and maybe he could _stall_ or something, anything, maybe he could suck in enough air to make his body start working right again, but the sedative was eating away at him, dragging him into blackness.

"Don't even think it," his father snarled. And Castle knew that all Black had to do was train the gun on Beckett and he'd do anything his father told him to.

Fuck. He couldn't _breathe._

"Black," she called. "Black, let him go. Just-"

"_Quiet_," his father roared. The soldier nearest to them backed off, gun swinging now to Black, and Castle met the man's eyes, pleaded with him to just do it. Take the shot. Take the shot.

"Black-"

"Beckett, shut your mouth and head for the door. Once you're inside, lower the cargo ramp and jump out."

"No," she said, a tremulous note to her voice that Castle thought only he could hear. And he was so damn proud of her in that moment, that his knees went weak with relief. She wouldn't let-

"You do it, or his guts are all over your shoes."

She did it.

Castle groaned, renewed his efforts to rip out of his father's hold on him, but he just couldn't get air. Black spots bloomed before his vision, blinding him to Beckett as she crawled up onto the wing and towards the side door. She'd have to heave on the outside latches to get it open - it might be impossible for her to get leverage-

No, of course not. She was Beckett; his life was on the line and so she managed it.

"Now, inside," Black yelled. "Lower the cargo ramp. You've got fifteen seconds."

Castle wheezed and felt the earth sucking him down but his father loosened his grip and he sucked desperately at air, drawing it down, his own breathing so harsh, choking, that he missed what happened next. He heard the ramp for the back end of the plane coming down and then he was being yanked towards it, but something else had happened, someone had happened, and he felt the sweat on Black's body pressing into his, staining him, acrid and tense.

His vision was dark, deprived of oxygen; his lips wouldn't work right.

"Stay back," Black ordered. "Beckett, get out there. Get down."

Beckett walked down the ramp towards them - Castle could make out the form of her as the darkness shifted around in his eyes. But her eyes moved past him and over his shoulder, widening in horror. She _flew _down the ramp, shouting, and she pushed right past him and Black, and she shoved herself in front of them.

"No," she shouted. "No, stop. Stop it. You can't."

Mitchell, Castle saw, struggling to break his father's hold on his neck. He kept pitching off the ramp and his father would drag him back, but Mitchell. Mitch would save her, Mitch would make it okay.

"Can't let him do this, Kate."

"You don't understand," she pleaded. "Don't. He'll shoot Castle."

"And then I'll shoot him."

"Castle will _ die._"

"Not quickly though," Black yelled to them, still dragging Castle back.

"I'll take my chances," Mitch yelled. Good ole' Mitch; he'd do it too. He'd fucking shoot Black and it would be over.

"_No_," Kate yelled, putting herself in front of Black. "No, no, it will kill Castle. It will kill him."

"You don't know that," Mitch said grimly.

Above his head, Black strangled Castle tighter. "And then my next shot goes straight for Beckett's head."

"No," he wheezed. But at that moment, Castle felt the grip on his neck shift. A fraction, a misstep was all, and Castle took it, gun be damned. This was the only chance he was going to get, gut shot or not.

Because Castle knew - he was certain - that the moment they got on that plane, Black was going to shoot Beckett anyway.

So Castle slammed his head back into his father's face, felt the groan and crunch of bone colliding. He grunted and fell to his knees even as the gunshot sounded, felt the burn and blade of the bullet through him. Another gunshot and Beckett screamed, someone yelled her name, _Kate,_ the pounding of boots on the cargo ramp, the hot and wet pain that drenched him.

"Kate," he moaned, the black night swallowing him.

* * *

><p>When Beckett turned at the gunshot, horror choking her throat, she saw Black had thrown Castle over his shoulder and was dragging him towards the cargo hold of the plane.<p>

"No!" She lurched backward, knew she was getting in the way of Mitchell's shot, but she threw herself at Black. His weapon came up and Mitch screamed her name.

Rabid frustration clawed in her chest and she lashed out with one foot, swept Black behind the knees to knock him off balance. She fell into a crouch under his gun and felt the bullet passing just over her head.

Black didn't fall, but Castle's weight off-balanced him as Black tried to get him inside the plane. Castle pitched towards the ramp and Beckett lunged for her husband, catching him against her before his head could hit the metal. Black roared and brought his gun to bear on her, but Kate had Castle up against her chest, trying to drag him down the ramp.

Black aimed. There was a terrible hesitation - time clicking into place - and she saw, burning and desperate, the very instant Black decided to take the shot.

He was going to shoot.

"No!"

"Shut _up_," Black snarled at her and braced himself in the doorway, finger at the trigger. Kate cursed and torqued violently to her right, pitching herself and Castle off the side of the ramp and to the ground five feet below. Her shoulder hit the gravel landing strip first, her head bouncing, and she moaned, her vision going black, swallowing her, Castle heavy across her body.

She heard the violence, felt it in the ground, the very air, the scream and claw of two forces, and she struggled to rise, to save him, to _move_.

Castle was unconscious over her and she had to scramble out from under him, but as she did, she realized the cargo ramp was closing, the thin crack of darkness as it sealed, and Mitchell was running towards her. The plane's engines were starting, the piercing whine was the scream she kept hearing in her ears, and her arms were filled with him.

Castle.

She hurriedly ran her hands over his body, diving under his shirt, scraping through his scalp, stretching to reach his hips and thighs, her eyes barely able to see him in the red lights of the plane. It was beginning to turn, to aim for escape, but she couldn't care.

"You're okay, you're okay, you're not shot," she heard herself saying, again and again. And she had to wonder how long she'd been saying it.

"What the hell was that?" Mitchell screamed at her. He had his weapon towards the plane, his other men were shooting, and she couldn't see anything in the darkness.

She cradled Castle's head against her, her fingers gripping his jaw as she leaned over him, her ear to his lips. He was breathing, his heart was steadily thumping against her palm; he had just finally succumbed to the combination of sedatives and regimen.

But he was alive.

The plane was rumbling down the runway, and she didn't even care.

"Beckett. What the hell. Tell me what the hell we're doing here. What are we doing? What is your _damn plan_?"

She lifted her head, everything shimmering and vibrating with exhaustion in the darkness, and she saw, faintly, the outline of their friend in the night.

"Let him go, let him fly," she croaked.

"_What_?"

"He's tracked - tracking - Castle injected him. Ask Malone."

Mitchell cursed and shouted a cease and desist to his team even as he pulled out his phone. She curled around Castle and couldn't help running her hands over him again, just to be sure.

He hadn't been shot.

His father hadn't shot him.

"We got four wounded," Mitchell yelled over the noise of the engine. "Four. What the fuck was that?"

She couldn't find her voice for answer, could only stroke her fingers over the rough weave of Castle's thermal shirt, her own heart not quite steady yet.

"You're okay, you're okay," she chanted over him. "You're not shot."

He was heavy in his unconsciousness, but she wouldn't dare move him.

"Beckett. Snap out of it." Mitchell leaned in over her and grabbed her by the shoulder, jerking her attention towards him. "Were _you_ shot? You're bleeding."

"No," she croaked. "Not fresh."

"It is fresh. What happened here? What is this? What the hell is going on? Why did Castle not even _do_ anything?"

"Couldn't," she rasped, feeling her relief choking her. "Help me get him up. Black pumped him full of sedatives and the injections and... help me, Mitch."

"Fuck," Mitchell growled. "All right. Come on. This whole thing went to shit, so what the hell, might as well ignore all safety protocol and carry his sorry ass out of here."

She knew he was just spouting off because he'd been as afraid as she'd been. Mitchell slung his weapon over his back and leaned down, hauled Castle up with a shoulder under his armpit. Kate felt bereft, unanchored without her husband's weight, and suddenly the plane reached the end of the runway and lifted, effortlessly, into the black night.

All she could see of it were those red lights.

Mitchell grunted under Castle's weight, touched a hand to the IFB in his ear. "Malone says the signal is strong. He's tracking the bastard."

At least there was that.

Castle might never forgive her for this - for _helping_ Black escape - but at least they were tracking him.

* * *

><p>When the strong arm reached past Mitchell and helped Kate haul Castle upright, Beckett was so startled she nearly dropped her husband.<p>

It was Esposito, and he was half-carrying Castle towards the jeep they'd appropriated, grunting at her to _keep up, Beckett._

She scrambled to do so, her arm around Castle's waist as her various wounds began to throb. Her neck burned at the raw places, her ear was hot with pain, and she could hardly bear to have her shoulder move.

"This guy's heavy," Esposito grunted. He and Mitch slung Castle into the backseat, and Espo nudged her in beside him; she fell over Castle's legs even as she tried to clamber inside. Esposito gave her a dirty look and hefted her over the open side of the jeep, arranged Castle's legs inside as well.

"He's going to be unconscious for a little while," she admitted. "We need a place to..."

"We've got a command center set up, even have the electricity running again."

"The mercenaries that were with Black-"

"Accounted for."

She let out a relieved breath, but she couldn't let herself relax, not yet. She didn't know what came next and Castle was still unconscious; she knew he'd been pushing himself too hard, that his body was in a vulnerable place with the regimen working inside him to rebuild his systems. He'd told her he needed at least four hours to recover, and he'd had maybe two.

She gripped the front of his shirt to steady him as the jeep careened around a corner and over a jagged place in the dirt path. His head rolled and she reached out to pull him against her, keeping him safe.

While he'd let her, anyway.

* * *

><p>Castle woke in silence on the outskirts of activity, the hum of efficiency somewhere far off, the darkness around him soothing for all its removal from the action. He shifted in the bed and felt the light touch of covers, the curious lack of weight.<p>

He took a breath and it hit him - everything.

Castle jerked upright on an unvoiced _no_, but the darkness was quiet and respectful, the darkness was trying to soothe him.

He turned blindly to get out of bed and his feet hit the floor sooner than he'd expected; the frame rocked and trembled and he realized it was an army cot, and that meant he was still on the island listening station.

Or in his panic room downstairs.

With his luck, probably the damn island.

Castle groaned and rubbed his hand down his face, but he felt good. Even as he thought that, he got to his feet and moved without caution towards where he expected the door, found the wall with a hand, brushed his fingers over the switch.

The light came on and everything was illuminated.

The army cot he'd woken up on was pulled up beside a second, and on the thin mattress was his wife, asleep on her side. The light hadn't even woken her. She was pale, bruises flaring darkly under her skin, her body so thin under the blanket that she barely took up any space at all.

He feasted with his eyes for as long as he could stand it, and then he turned the light off once more.

The afterimage remained, but he slid through the room without sight, carefully navigating his way back towards the army cot and her side, pushed the bed until it bumped up against hers, right there, close. He eased back down and reached out for her, found her bony shoulder, the edge of a bandage taped to her skin below the scoop of her black t-shirt.

He pulled her into him and closed his eyes, pushed everything else away, ignored it, kept it out there with the busy center of the operational effort, kept himself and Kate here, on the outskirts with the silence.

She breathed in and out in the quiet, her ribs expanding under his arm, her heart safe under his hand. He nudged his nose into the warm skin at the nape of her neck and slid his thigh between her knees.

Everything else could wait. She was at peace and she was alive, and soon enough the rest of it would crash down on him.

* * *

><p>He stayed as long as he could, but when the outside world crowded in and reminded him he had duties and responsibilities, reminded him that they were here because of what she'd done, Castle reluctantly withdrew.<p>

He tugged the too-thin blanket up over her, close at her neck the way she liked it, and then he cracked open the door and slipped outside.

His furious and grief-stricken anger came back to him in the hallway, and he strode down the blank stone corridor towards the hub of activity just beyond. He found Esposito standing at attention right at the juncture of the two halls, and the man gave him a grudging half-salute.

"Esposito," he acknowledged. "Good to see you."

"Agent Mitchell is just in there," Espo pointed out, cocking a finger towards an open door down the hall. "Beckett still passed out?"

"Passed out?"

"Asleep."

"Yes," he answered. He realized he was looking back down the way he'd come and that he'd started rubbing his thumb over the creased scar at his palm. New, pink, and raw enough to sting. The place where he'd caught the blade.

"Good."

Castle glanced back to Esposito and saw the pride on the man's face, realized Esposito had a hand in that. "You got her bandaged up?"

"Made her let the medic look at her while we dropped you in a bed down there. Let you sleep it off."

"Esposito," he said, reaching out to grip the man's arm. "Thank you."

"Whatever man," he said, shrugging him off.

He dropped it and moved down to what had been the server room, confident that Esposito would look out for Beckett as he stood guard in the hallway. Inside the room, he found Mitchell and Monares working over a laptop, Monares wide fingers surprisingly adept as he pushed a cord into the side.

"Mitch."

His friend glanced up, gave him a short nod. "Glad to see you awake."

"What's going on?"

"Doing some clean up, seeing what Black might have left lying around, and tracking him in that plane."

"Tracking... How'd he get off the damn island?"

"Shit went down, Castle. You were unconscious. Beckett got you, and Black got on the plane."

"And _then_? You let him go? Just... fly off. No attempt to-"

"Castle, shut the hell up, would you? You don't get to pass judgment on my operational decisions when you're the one who ditched the plan in the first place."

He shut the hell up and swallowed the rest of his ire because Mitchell wasn't the one he was pissed at. "All right. Fine. What are we doing to track him?"

"Nothing to do," Mitchell said. "All right here on the screen. Monares has it covered. But you know what you can do? Talk to Reynolds."

Castle startled. "Reynolds is alive?"

"Yeah, man. We found him closed up in a room back there. Beat up pretty bad, but alive. He's kinda miserable, but I think most of that is shame. You knew him, right, before he came out here? Think he could use a friend."

"I knew him, yeah. I'll talk to him." Castle sighed and rubbed at the scar in his palm, the way it seemed alive with electricity, an awareness in it that he didn't like. "I'll talk to him while Beckett's still out. Not sure when she last had sleep."

"She looked pretty rough, but the medic said it's just bruised ribs and those stitches."

"Stitches."

"On her shoulder. The bullet that grazed her ear - medic said that would heal so long as she keeps it clean."

"Ah. Right." Castle rubbed the scar harder to feel the give of his skin and the resistance of pain. "Actually, I'll go check on Beckett first and then-"

"No," Mitch said, blocking him with a hand to his chest. "No. Go talk to Reynolds."

He was right. He was right. Enough with Beckett for now. He'd only be tempted to wake her up and yell at her.

"Where's Reynolds now," he sighed.

* * *

><p>Castle leaned in over the bed with his elbows on his thighs and his hands dangling down, helpless, as he watched Reynolds breathing through the mask. Every release of the kid's chest seemed like it would be his last, but his lungs expanded again each time.<p>

"Shit, Reynolds," he sighed.

The kid blinked dully, but a finger lifted from the bed, the pulse-ox weighing down the digit so much that it collapsed back to the blanket. He was outfitted with the best they had at the island, and it was good enough for now, but Reynolds looked beaten half to death. Black eyes, purple splotches on his neck and face, his hands swollen, half his fingers broken.

"Shit," Castle grunted, hung his head. "So sorry, man. Fuck, I am so sorry. What he did to you."

A growling noise came from the bed, and then the words from a bruised and scraped-raw throat. "Not you. Me. Let him out."

"Fuck."

"Told me. You warned me."

"God damn it, I want to fucking murder him."

"My own fault," Reynolds croaked. He looked ready to cry and fuck that would set Castle off; he'd be done if Reynolds actually cried. Lanky kid, blonde hair, freckles, those blue eyes and that cocky grin - all of that mottled and messed up, his career completely fucked by one mistake.

Trusting his former boss.

"You let him out?" Castle asked.

"He... was convincing. Take it back. Take it all back." His words were whispers, ragged through what remained of his throat.

Reynolds had screamed. Reynolds had been tortured for something - the broken fingers and the bruising and the beat-in face. What was left of his voice was witness to some kind of horror, and the idea that his father had done this to the man, or let his fucking mercenaries do it, was enough to make Castle sick.

"Did he get it?" Reynolds coughed. His hand came up to his throat as if he felt phantom fingers, but Castle jerked to attention and helped the kid, eased him upright.

"Breathe, kid. Shit. Don't worry about it. Just breathe."

"He got it? How'd he get in?"

"Get what? Got in to where?" Castle said, keeping his hand at Reynolds's shoulder to support him. Michael, that was his first name. Michael Reynolds. He'd been on Eastman's crew out of New York back when he'd first been training. In fact, Reynolds had been one of the guys sitting on Beckett's apartment when Castle had first met her.

"Got in," Reynolds sighed, slumping back down to the army cot. He closed his eyes and his breathing evened out again, like he might fall asleep. But he spoke again. "To the weapons."

"No. He didn't get into the weapons room. He brought his own, kid."

"Not this one," Reynolds groaned. "Not this. I'm the only one with the combination. Only one can get it."

"Get what, Michael?" he said quietly, but the kid had opened his eyes and was staring at the ceiling, breathing faster, looking agitated.

"He didn't get it, did he? Did he get it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, kid," he said. He stood over Reynolds and checked the monitor, but no alarms were going off and it was just a breathing mask and an IV for pain. The pulse-ox was as normal as it could be, heart rate a little elevated but nothing wrong. "Michael, come on. Calm down."

"Head hurts."

"I'm sure it does. You got a bitchin' black eye. Two of 'em."

He dropped back to his seat and watched Reynolds breathe, the labor of it, and he wondered if this was how it looked to Beckett when Castle had been drowning in pneumonia. Worse probably. Whenever Reynolds seemed to falter, when his breath hitched, Castle found himself rigid and hands fisted on his thighs, waiting until the kid kept going.

"Hey, Reynolds. Remember when you first started? My partner Eastman had you sitting surveillance duty on my wife's apartment. Kate Beckett. Wasn't my wife then, but you know what I mean."

"Surveillance," he said. His eyes were open again, his head turned slowly to look at Castle. "Shit, that was Beckett."

"Yeah," he grinned back. "Small world, huh?"

"She was hot. Is hot. Fuck, I watched her-" Reynolds cut off, and Castle could swear his cheeks were pink under all those black bruises.

"You watched her...?" Castle prompted, raising both eyebrows.

"Already got beat up once this week. Don't need it again - keeping my mouth shut."

Castle laughed and shook his head, reached out carefully to lay his hand on Reynolds's shoulder. "You heal up, you come find me, Michael. All right? I'll take care of this."

"He didn't get it, did he?" Reynolds said again. "I didn't tell him the combination."

"He didn't get it," Castle said, but he had no idea what the kid was talking about. Didn't tell Black what?

"Good," Reynolds sighed. His eyelids dropped and he was falling off the cliff of awareness.

Castle sat there for a long time, elbows on his knees, and tried to reconcile himself to what his father had done - all for his son, to reclaim his son's rightful place as the CIA's unbeatable machine.


	10. Chapter 10

**Close Encounters 14**

* * *

><p>Kate jerked to a halt just inside the door, throat closing up. "Oh, God, is that Reynolds?"<p>

At her voice, Castle's head jerked up and he twisted in the chair, his eyes hollow and echoing the same horror that sat on her chest. Beckett came into the room slowly, feeling every ache in her body, and she touched Reynolds's hand.

"He's asleep. Pain meds," Castle said shortly.

"Where'd they find him?" she whispered.

"West side of the sultan's apartments, this section," he said.

"God, he looks awful."

"No worse than you," Castle gritted out.

She turned back to him, horrified, but she'd seen the fury on his face when he'd looked at her, and she saw it again now. Fury for what she'd done, what his father had done, all of it mingling together.

She let go of Reynolds's hand and stood awkwardly in front of Castle, tried to find her husband inside the stranger staring back at her.

He broke first. "No worse than me, I guess," he sighed. "Was it like this?"

"Was what like this?" she said quietly.

"When I had pneumonia."

She glanced over her shoulder at the battered face of Michael Reynolds, the bruises and discoloration, the broken fingers splinted and swollen, the dragging slur of his breath as his chest rose.

It wasn't like this. It'd been worse.

"Yes," she sighed. "Close enough."

Castle didn't answer and she thought maybe that was as close as they were going to get to a reconciliation on this one. At least today anyway.

"How's your shoulder?" he said.

"Hurts," she admitted. She watched that hit him, the satisfaction on his face - either because she'd told the truth or because she deserved it, she didn't know. "Hurts to move my arm. Bruised pretty badly. But my neck has stitches - they'll come out on their own in a couple weeks. Medic said it won't even scar."

"Huh."

"And my cheekbone is just bruised," she finished. "Though I was afraid it'd been cracked."

He glanced up at her, darkness in his eyes but she thought maybe he was trying. "Someone hit you?"

"Not that time," she said softly. "Shoulder got the blows. Cheek is from the... bullet."

"Deleware."

"I don't think he meant-"

"If you're about to tell me that he didn't mean to _shoot you_, I don't want to hear it."

She closed her mouth and worked the words around in her head for a moment, tried to make it come out right. "He said some things. About us. And I lost it and kicked him in the nuts."

Castle grunted. It looked like a laugh. Maybe.

So she kept going. "And in retaliation, he pulled his gun and shot at me. He said I... moved. It was supposed to be a warning shot. I guess. I don't know, Castle. He was a creep and he made me nervous even when we didn't know he was damn traitor."

"I just thought he was some damn computer genius. Icky about blood."

"Icky?" she said faintly, surprised by the way it amused her.

"Whatever. Shut up, Beckett."

She didn't want to smile but it happened anyway, and something in her that had been so wary of him just disappeared, sank back down under. "I'm not sorry you killed him."

"Well, I am," he growled. "And that's your fault too."

She flinched back.

"You gave me a damn conscience," he said, lifting his head and giving her these baleful, accusing eyes. "A conscience. What the hell am I supposed to do with that? It makes me hesitate. It makes me feel fucking guilty over things I didn't even do."

He raked his hand through the air in front of them, indicating the unconscious Reynolds, and Kate came back towards him, reached out to take that trembling hand.

"I'm sorry," she said, but she wasn't. Not for giving him a conscience, because it had also opened up his life.

"I wish I had killed Deleware more slowly than that," he growled. "I wish he'd said to _my_ face whatever he said to yours. I wish my father's plane would catch on _fire_ and _burn him alive._ I hope he screams and writhes in pain before he crashes."

"Castle," she sighed.

He shook her off, shoulders shrugging and body tense, and then he stood up and backed away from the bed. "Reynolds said something about the weapons room. I gotta go check it out."

And then he left her there.

* * *

><p>Beckett followed him.<p>

He felt the snag of her hand at his elbow and he turned on her, felt the snap of his control just like that. She didn't flinch, didn't hesitate, didn't even resist him; he shoved her back against the wall and pressed his body to hers to keep her there.

And no words came.

The rage strangled him until he thought maybe he was strangling her too, but when he jerked away, she came with him, her arm wrapped around his neck and her body shaking. Or maybe that was his.

"Yell at me," she scraped out. "Just yell at me and curse me and - it would make us both feel better."

"I love you," he choked. "Damn it, Beckett."

"That's why, that's why," she keened, her face against his neck. Her other arm dangled at her side and it was that - the inability to use her own arm to hold him there - that broke the fury, broke him too.

He wrapped his arm at her waist and cradled the back of her head, careful of the bandage at her neck and shoulder where the stitches hid. "Kate," he cried out, had to grind his teeth to keep from saying something else, something stupid or mean or hurtful.

"I'm sorry that I'm not sorry," she whispered.

The laugh punched out of him before he knew it, and her arm around his neck tightened like a python, her body trying to curl around his, her knee at his hip. Her mouth turned as if seeking his.

"Little indecent for the hallway," he muttered. He was afraid of what he'd do if he kissed her now, if he gave it away for a moment, how it might spill out onto her, the furious and deep and black grief.

"I don't care - why do you care?" she moaned.

"Because I care," he gruffed, putting her away. "Because there's work. I - there are things that have to be done."

"Mitchell is tracking him," she said, her back against the wall and her arm unloosing from his neck. She looked ragged and exhausted, but she also looked fierce. She always looked fierce - she never backed down.

"The moment we know-"

"The moment we know, we do our homework," she interrupted. "We get satellite surveillance; we go carefully. We-"

"Right, because all of the sudden, you're the one preaching caution and a cool head?"

She glared at him, and he shook his head, backed off, tried to resume his walk down the hallway.

"Don't walk away from me."

"I'm walking _towards_ the weapons room. You can either come or you can watch me walk."

She snorted something and he felt her hand grip his elbow, yanking. Her eyes were dark and hard, but he caught the movement of liquid grief below, and it tore at his anger again, shredding it.

"Why won't you just be _angry_ with me?" she said. Her fingers were digging into his forearm. "Let it out. You've never been one to hold it-"

"If I get angry right now - if I let it go - I won't survive it," he hissed. "I want to mangle things. I want to blow shit up. I want attack that weapons room and find out what the hell my father _beat_ a kid for, and maybe while I do that, I can forget how that might have been you - could have been you - _that could have been you_."

"But it wasn't. He needed me for you," she said back. "He wanted you. Even at the end, he couldn't shoot you even though..."

"At the end, he damn well would have," Castle growled. "You think he wouldn't? He'd do whatever he thought necessary, Beckett, and if he decides on a whim that it's too much trouble to keep you _alive_-"

He realized he was shouting. He realized he was yelling at her in the middle of a damn hallway when all he wanted was to bury himself inside her and never come out, wrap his arms around her and crush her against him. He wanted to rage at her, but he wanted to _love_ her more, and the need and the fear and the pain twisted in him until he was afraid of what might come out.

He couldn't be sure it wasn't something ugly. So he moved away from her again, stepped back, took a breath.

But she chased him. She always did. She pressed the flat of her palm to his dirty shirt and he knew she could feel the wild and unmeasured insistence of his heart for her. She rubbed her thumb at his waist and rucked up his shirt until it was skin to skin, heat to the cool relief of her fingers.

He sucked in a breath and found he couldn't let it out again; she shifted closer.

"My only thought - through all of this - was how much I loved you," she murmured. "How much I need you. And I know it's mutual, I know that it's not fair of me to take risks with my life when I wouldn't take risks with yours. But I've felt that despair, and I can't go back there. It's selfish of me, it's so selfish, I know."

"I couldn't live with myself if my father killed you," he whispered.

"I couldn't live if you died," she sighed.

"But somehow, I'm the one who's supposed to take it. Be brave."

"I can't be that brave," she admitted, her head tilting to one side in that way she had when she was trying to gauge his mood. "I had to, once. And I know you deserve better-"

"I deserve you," he growled, felt it building in him again. His vent for this anger didn't seem to work very well, didn't seem to disperse it fast enough. Every time she started to explain, he wanted to dig his hands into fists and beat the shit out of something.

"I want to be deserved," she said finally. "I'm sorry I'm-"

"Stop fucking apologizing," he rasped. "I'm so tired of apologies. I'm so tired of all of this. I just want you. Just you, Kate, and I don't understand why we can't have that."

She didn't speak and he didn't try to make her. They stood apart and together at the same time, connected by her hesitant fingers at the skin of his abs. And no more.

"I was trying to give us that," she answered then. "I was just trying to keep you."

By losing herself. And he'd never be okay with that. Never. She could explain and rationalize for a thousand years, but in the end, he wasn't going to agree with her.

"You said find another way," she offered. Her fingers curled at the waistband of his pants. "Find another way. Can we... can we do that?"

He lifted his eyes to hers, searched out the truth of it. "I don't know. Isn't that kind of up to you? Since you're the one allowed to be foolish and take risks and jump right off the cliff into danger. But I'm not."

She closed her mouth; he saw the work and effort she put into swallowing that down. Fine, let her work on it. He wanted to smash things and he thought he was doing the best he could right here, not smashing. Not completely losing it.

"Let's find another way," she answered then. "Starting right now. I come to you, you come to me. I... try harder. I'm honest with you and you're honest with me."

"When have I not been honest with you?" he said flatly.

"You didn't tell me how bad it'd gotten. I missed it, Castle. Missed it entirely."

"What?"

"When you got sick."

He tossed that off with a gesture but she caught his hand and crushed his fingers, glaring at him. "Don't do that. Don't act like it's nothing. It's something to me."

He twisted out of her grip but instead grabbed her elbow, drew her out of the hallway and into an unoccupied room. He flipped the light on and she wandered to a couch covered in a dropcloth, sank down onto it.

He stared at her a moment and then conceded. He was always conceding, but he didn't know how else to do this. "All right. It feels like nothing to me because I got sick - I just got _sick -_ and it's not your job to know when it's bad."

"I'm your wife."

"Yes. So?"

She snorted and rubbed her hand gingerly along her forehead. "So, it is my job. More than that, it's my right and my - my _love_ to want to keep you, to want to - to just - I don't know, Castle. Don't you care when I get hurt?"

He gritted his teeth. "Yes. I care." He paced the room and came back to her. "Okay. I see. I get it. I want to know everything when it comes to you and you do too. I'm just not always good at knowing it's something worth mentioning."

"Me either," she admitted. "With me. It's - I'm already so... complicated."

He sank onto the couch. "Is that a bad thing? Because I think I'm right up there with complicated. I think it's my shit making this as complicated as it is. The damn regimen is just - taking over everything."

"Okay, I - don't see it like that. But." She shrugged and her knees drew up slowly into her chest, her uninjured cheek coming to rest on top. "I'm tired. I don't know if I can have this kind of conversation without crying."

His heart twisted and he reached out, gripped the knot of her hair at the back of her neck. But he didn't force her into him, didn't pull, just held on. She stayed where she was, looking at him.

"Okay, so no therapy right now," he gave in. He wasn't sure it was good for him either - not when wall-punching seemed such a likely outcome. "But I want to get started on this better way, this other way of doing things."

"Uh-oh," she sighed, but her lips quirked.

"Tell me."

"Tell you what?"

"What happened."

"I already told you-"

"Not a case report, Beckett. Debrief me," he answered. This time he did tug a little, very slight, just enough that she could easily resist him. But she didn't; she slumped over into him and straddled his thigh, her wrenched shoulder carefully placed in the cradle of his arm.

"What first?" she sighed.

"What he said to you," he demanded. "What his words were. That made you lash out when you didn't have the advantage."

"He'd watched us. He'd seen the surveillance on your old CIA safe house in the city where we - where we - he'd watched us."

"I'm glad he's dead."

She sighed and went still, but he wanted the words. He needed the words, and she must have known that because after a long time, the confession came out of her.

"He said we were twisted, fucked up. He said he knew how I liked it, and how I wanted the pain, and how dark it was in me."

He closed his eyes. He breathed. He slowly wrapped his arm around her shoulders and cradled the back of her head and pressed his mouth to her temple, and he breathed.

"I hope you didn't listen," he whispered. "I hope you know better than to believe any of it."

She was quiet, she was breathing in time with him, and he heard the unvoiced protests that came immediately to her mind, but at least she didn't say them. At least she didn't do him the dishonor of making a case for the lies.

Progress.

"I adore you," he murmured. "All that's good in me is because of you. What we do together, how we find each other, Kate, that's never wrong."

"I know," she sighed. "I've never thought it wrong."

"I'm glad he's dead. And it eases my conscience to know what he said to you."

She curled in against him, as if to make herself smaller, as if to touch as much of him as she could, and though his anger still shook the bars of its cage, the prison held.

"I love you, too," she said back, a response to his call in the hallway. "And that's why. That's why I did this. I can't be sorry for loving you. It's not wrong."

Maybe it wasn't.

But this was just how love went.

* * *

><p>Beckett knew that they both understood what had happened that hour in the court yard. When she had told Castle that the graze on her cheek and at her ear weren't his father, she could have left it at that. Instead, she'd told him it'd been Deleware and she'd marked the man for death.<p>

Maybe she hadn't know that Castle was going to kill him. But she'd seen what her husband had done to Vadim. She knew. She knew and she'd spoken his name like a conviction.

They shared the weight of that death.

But at least it was shared. She knew now that it was better this way, even if it ached at first, even if admitting to him the truth about the dark things and the way they burrowed inside her was painful and seemed counterproductive.

Therapy helped, and Castle helped, even when he was still so angry.

Whatever moment they had out of time on that dusty couch was gone now as they stood outside the weapons room and stared at the combination lock.

"We could ask," Mitchell said.

"I don't want to wake him up just to ask him the same damn question my father tortured him for," Castle sighed.

Good point.

"I suppose he already tried to blast through it," Beckett mused, running her fingers along the metal door. It was scored, pitted.

"Looks like," Castle agreed, hunching closer to her and moving his fingers over the same place. She felt his nearness like a buzz saw, rattling and snarling, chomping at the bit to cut into her. Held back and tightly reined, but still he was angry. He might be angry with her for a while.

Angry with all of this - how it went down, what his father had done - and she knew instinctively that those furies were coiled inside him, twisted up. She knew because of course she felt the same. On so many levels, she felt it, though hers had the added weight of grief.

Castle glanced over at her with a sigh, the chain saw of his anger subdued suddenly with a sorrow that pulled at her. Maybe she was wrong about it, maybe their grief was exactly the same.

"What can we do?" he asked her.

"I don't know."

His shoulders dropped and Mitchell gave them both a sour look; not even Mitch wanted to go back down the hall and wake the kid up to ask him more questions. "What about invoices or transfer orders or... whatever it is in there that Black wanted - it had to have a record."

"Maybe," Castle said hesitantly. "But do we have the time to look that up?"

"I'll ask him," Kate said quickly. It was her duty. "I was the one who started all of this by calling him up and asking to speak to Black. I opened Pandora's box."

"And you're good at interrogation," Mitchell said thoughtlessly. "You could handle it so that he wouldn't feel... interrogated."

She squared her jaw to take that hit, but she felt Castle's fingers brush the outside of her hip. Support or sympathy. Either way, agreement.

"All right," she rasped. "Give me some time with him. I won't wake him for it - or at least, not if I can help it."

"I'll walk with you," Castle said, giving Mitch a look she couldn't interpret. "Message me if something changes with the plane."

"Got it," Mitch said. And then Castle was pressing the tips of his fingers to her back and guiding her away from the door of the weapons room, back towards the series of triage stations the strike team had set up.

"You don't have to do this," he said to her. His voice was that controlled, tight thing. She wondered if part of him thought maybe she did. She thought so; she couldn't imagine that he didn't also think she deserved some kind of punishment for how she'd set them all up for this. For how she'd hurt him.

"I have to," she said in reply. "I can't - you remember what King likes to remind me about?"

"That you don't always have to use sex to get your way?"

She snorted and elbowed him, saw the answering flicker of something on his face. "Not that one. Though it's a good one, and I swear I'm trying not to dive right into that as my first line of defense-"

"Offense," he muttered. "With you - always on the offense. Strike before you can be struck."

"Not with you. I don't mean to strike you," she sighed. How had this gotten so far off track so quickly? "Wait. Back to - back to the other thing. King always says that I work out my guilt like self-punishment - penance for my sins."

"I also remember him saying that you take it too far."

"I have the potential to take it too far," she admitted. "But not with this. It needs to be done and I can do it right, without making him suspicious or - or just _hurt_. He's going to feel used already, his good intentions twisted up by Black, and Castle, shit, I know how that feels."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

Castle rubbed at his eyes. "Just don't... Can you just not punish me while you're doing your penance?" he sighed.

She fisted her hand and tried to contain that, the way that had blindsided her, the way she always seemed to forget that this was a two-way street. When he did something to himself, she felt it in the core of her, so why _wouldn't_ Castle feel the same?

"All right," she rasped. "Can you give me some parameters here?"

"You need parameters for not hurting yourself?" he asked, incredulous and... oh, angry. He was so angry.

"Don't hulk out, baby," she murmured, stupidly reaching out and laying her hand on his forearm. He growled and twisted under her touch, caught her hand in a crushing grip.

"How about the parameters are this? Don't put yourself in places where you'll receive serious injury or maiming. Don't make the mistake of thinking that physical pain _doesn't_ equal mental anguish - because it does. For both of us."

She swallowed and nodded quickly, roughly, her bad shoulder making her hand shake. He let go of her and moved his fingers up along the outside of her arm, lightly at her shoulder. "Sorry. This hurt?"

She took a slow breath. "Yes."

His eyes went back down the hallway as they kept walking; she waited for whatever he needed to say next, now that he seemed able to say it without blowing up.

"All right, Kate. You need to work out your guilt. I need... I don't know what I need. I need to be done with this whole thing. I need to go home and wrap myself up in you and not want to throttle you so much."

She laughed, couldn't help it, couldn't even begin to stop it, and he clutched once at her shoulder in reflex before he seemed to remember and let her go.

"What?" he growled. "Why is that so funny?"

She pressed her lips together but the smile was a little more permanent. She wasn't sure he'd think it was funny.

"Beckett."

"Deleware insinuated that we might like a little choking." It wasn't a pleasant sensation, choking, and she actually thought that might be off-limits for her. She could never even begin to imagine doing it to him - not after he was dying, suffocating slowly in his own lung fluid. Never. "And he wondered if you'd - would you still want me if he'd done it to me first."

After a second of staring at her dumbstruck, Castle roared. "Holy fucking hell. He said _more _to you?"

"Ah, just. You know. Hazing. Harassing me. He was trying to keep me off-balanced. To be honest, Castle, at the time I didn't even - it didn't exactly register. Now I see how those things wounded me, made me tell you it was him when you asked because I wanted him to hurt for it."

"Of course you did," he rasped. "I want him to hurt all over again. _Wounded_ you. Fuck, Beckett, it's more than just..."

"I know. I didn't see how it... I know," she sighed finally. "I know it does. It's too private. It's you and me and it's intimate and precious no matter... I don't think anyone would understand. This isn't even stuff we always tell Dr King. I don't like trying to rationalize or explain us."

"Shit," he grunted. "It doesn't matter what Deleware said. You know that, right? Whatever he said about you or me or us, that's not up to him to decide. We know. You and me - we know what happens between us, Kate."

She was struck again how passionate he was to defend her, how instantly he jumped into the breach. He always had, always would - remove any obstacle to get to her, face anything to have her, undergo the worst and most excruciating for love of her. And maybe she relied on that more than she should, maybe it was his willingness to bear all things that made her think it was permission to _force_ him to bear it.

Instead, she should be more protective of him. Because he was so quick to bear the burden, she should be the wall around his heart, shielding him.

"Kate? Tell me you know. Tell me that you understand-"

"I know, I know," she said quickly, reaching out for him again, needing the contact. Knowing he needed it too. "Of course I know. This is - this is old ground, Castle. Not even on my radar. I just - I felt it when he violated that space. Does that make sense? I felt his intrusion into something that always has been... sacred to me. How dare he... and I wanted him gone."

His fingers laced through hers, a movement that made her heart pound a little faster. No time for that, and Castle was still carefully holding himself in check, but she couldn't help thrilling to the contact. Like a peace offering. She still needed his touch, his fingers, those physical manifestations of love to do for her what words never could.

He was holding himself back, but she could wait for it. For him. He knew what it meant for her, what it did for them, and he wasn't going to let either of them have it when it couldn't be sustained, couldn't be _honest._

"I know," he said then. "You're right. It's sacred. This is sacred. And what _you_ do to it, Kate, to something sacred, sometimes that wounds me too. "

_Oh._

"But better you do the wounding than anyone else," he said then. "You're the only one I could take it from."


	11. Chapter 11

**Close Encounters 14: A View To A Kill**

* * *

><p>Castle passed her his phone. "I forgot," he sighed. They were just inside Reynolds's room, but the kid was asleep. Kate should stop calling him The Kid, because he was maybe five years younger than her, but it was Castle's habit and she'd picked up on it.<p>

"What is this?" she asked. She startled when she realized someone had answered, and she put the phone to her ear. "Hello?"

"Kate?"

"Dad," she gasped, her eyes darting to Castle's.

"I promised," he rumbled.

"Kate, honey, oh, I'm glad to hear your voice," her father said. The relief was so thick that it had its own weight and it settled over her hard, pressing her down. "You sound good, sweetheart. What happened? Where are you? Can you even tell me that?"

"Dad, Dad," she slowed him. "I'm fine - a little banged up, but it's my own fault." She caught Castle's eyes on her and saw the flicker of surprised _pride_ on his face. For telling her father the truth? She sighed and turned her back on him to concentrate on her father's voice.

"Oh, honey, I'm just glad you're okay. Can you tell me what happened? Did Rick find you?"

"Yeah, Dad, Castle found me. I was trying - his father... I had to ask Black for help."

"Katie. His father? One day it won't end well. You know it can't end well with him."

"I know," she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut. "I know. Believe me, Castle's letting me know too."

"You can't be so careless with his love, Kate, honey. You just can't. I know it feels unbreakable, but take it from me, it can be broken."

Kate's breath rattled in, lungs aching. Her hand gripped the phone as she tried to find a way to refute that, but she couldn't. Did she think she and Castle loved each other _more_ than her parents had - that it meant they couldn't be broken?

"But you're okay, sweetheart?"

"Okay, Daddy," she got out. "Be okay."

"Rick's taking care of you?"

"Yeah," she rasped.

"You let him. All right? You let him do whatever he needs to do, because you got your time when he was sick. You did what you had to do to ease your heart over him, and he's going to need that time now."

"Yeah," she nodded, swallowing tears again. "Yeah, Dad. I understand."

"Now let me talk to Rick. I love you, sweetheart."

"Love you too, Dad." She wordlessly handed the phone back to Castle, unable to look at him, chagrinned by her father's talking-to. Castle took the phone and pressed it against his ear, and then his face flushed bright red and he turned away, shuffling out of the room with a low, _yes, sir._

Kate choked down a laugh and sank into the chair beside Reynolds's bed, rubbing a hand over her face. The movement made her shoulder ache and her cheekbone throb, and she winced, tilting her head to one side as if that could relieve the pressure.

The ache seemed to trickle down her jaw and settle in her teeth, her body's beatings catching up with her. She couldn't imagine what she'd feel like if she hadn't been given the last six months' healing, rebuilding, after Russia. She was strong now; she could bounce back from this easily enough.

She might not have a regimen, but she was tougher than most.

"You okay?"

Her head lifted and her eyes opened to see Reynolds in the bed; he was half-drowsy with pain medication and only one of his eyelids would open, but he seemed to know her.

"Hey there, Michael," she said softly. The light in the room seemed too much for him, so she got up and flipped the switch, came back to his bedside. "That better?"

"Huh. Yeah," he slurred.

"You okay, Michael?"

He flinched again and she realized maybe it wasn't the light but the use of his first name. Had Black used the same tactic?

"Okay," he repeated back to her. "Hurts."

"I know it does. Believe me, I know," she said, shifting closer. She saw his eyes track the bruises that bloomed across the side of her neck, her cheek. "You know what Castle told me just now? You were one of the guys sitting on my apartment four years ago. When I was still with the NYPD. Watching me."

Reynolds grunted with something, a flicker of embarrassment or pride - maybe both. He tilted his head back and licked his cracked lips. "Yeah. That was me."

"Uh-huh," she murmured, smiling herself. "You happen to see anything... interesting there, Michael?"

His breath left him in a huff and he lifted that one eyelid at her again. "I..."

"No, no, it's perfectly fine. The blinds were drawn, so it was just shadows and silhouettes."

He laughed at that, a soft thing, but it was there. A connection.

"You've been with us for a long time. Never said a word about it. Always respectful. I appreciate that."

He sighed and gave her a crooked smile, mouth not quite working right. It tugged at her heart; she felt for him what she felt for Kevin Ryan, like a younger brother she ought to have looked out for.

"You spend long enough with Castle and you usually get a nickname," she murmured. "But you're just Michael? Nothing else?"

Reynolds grunted and she smiled, knew she was getting through to him. He'd softened to her.

"What's that, Reynolds?"

"No, yeah, had a name," he mumbled.

"What was it? Or should I go ask Castle?"

He sighed and flicked a finger towards her. "No," he slurred again. His eyes closed and opened; he was making an effort to be with her. "It was Emren."

"Emren?" she chuckled. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Just. My name. Michael, M. Reynolds, M. Ren. ."

"Oh," she laughed. "Well, yes. I see. Emren. Cute."

He groaned but it wasn't pain, just coming along with her for the conversation. "Everybody was an M. I pointed it out and they... all picked up on it."

"Everybody was an M?"

"Marc. Me. Mitch. Malone. Mason. Everybody but Agent Castle. He started it."

"Sounds like him. You know what he calls me? _Baby._"

Reynolds's eyes flared up on a laugh that rasped through his throat. "Well, I dodged a bullet."

She laughed as well. "You and me both," she added. His gaze came to her and she winced, let him see how she really had dodged a bullet. "When you feel up to it, I hope you'll come to our place for dinner, Michael."

"Yeah," he slurred. But his eyes opened again, looked at her. "I like you."

She smiled back softly. "I like you too. I think we have a lot in common. More than nicknames from Castle."

His eyes were drooping, his body seemed to be settling in for unconsciousness, but he licked his lips again. "Didn't mean to let him trick me."

"I know," she sighed. "Don't I know. Me either."

"He just..."

"He twists it around. He always has another plan running behind the one you thought you figured out."

"Yeah," Reynolds sighed. "He wanted in the weapons room. In the locker. It's just a bunch of guns, you know? For the station. What the hell did he need that for? But then I guess the meds."

"The what?" she said, surprised at how it just came tumbling out of the kid.

"Don't know. Was here when I got here as station keeper. I guess morphine for the infirmary. Something."

"But, Ren, he beat you up for that combination. For some morphine and guns - why did you hold out?"

"Pissed me off," Reynolds grunted. "Just... felt I still had power over him if I didn't. Kill me when I did."

She pressed her hands between her knees on a shudder, stared at the kid in the bed. Battered face, broken fingers, bruised. He'd seen the eventual outcome of his predicament and he'd faced it with more courage and guts than most.

"Proud of you," she whispered, reaching out to lightly touch his wrist. "You did good. Stayed alive."

"Pi."

"What?"

He cleared his throat and opened his eyes to her. "Pi. Three point one four. Take it out to the ninth place."

"The combination," she breathed.

"Yeah." His body was tense, as if he was waiting for something, as if he expected the blow.

"All right," she murmured, stroking her fingers at his wrist. "Okay, Ren. Just relax."

"Don't you need to go?"

"No," she said softly, laying her hand gently against his forearm. "Not at all. I'll stay until you fall asleep."

He didn't say it but it his eyes showed his relief. It'd be a long time before he felt safe again, able to trust his own decisions when it came to this job. She hunched in closer to him, pressing her thumb to the warm skin of his inside wrist, one of the only places not bruised.

She'd make sure they took care of him.

* * *

><p>"Yes, sir," Castle said, dropping his head as he stood in the hallway alone.<p>

On the other end of the phone, Jim Beckett sighed. "Son, I'm just grateful she has you. With a daughter like Kate, at least I have a son like you."

Castle's throat closed up and he shifted on his feet, not sure what to say to that. Grateful just couldn't begin to cover it.

"All right, enough of this," Jim said. He was so clearly relieved that it made Castle uncomfortable.

"I don't know that I should have told you," he started.

"I'm glad you did. When you're forthright with me, I can rest easier. Means that even if most everything about your lives is classified, I'm still going to know - someone is going to make sure that I'm not in the dark."

"No, sir," Castle grunted. "I won't - no, sir. You'll know."

"Son, just - I feel like you've given me more than you know. And to repay you a little, let me just offer this."

"Jim, I don't need-"

"Just let me say this. For what it's worth, I don't agree with my daughter's actions. But I do understand them. Everyone she's loved has left her - maybe not intentionally, maybe not meaning to do her harm - but everyone. Her mother, myself-"

"Jim," Castle protested. "You didn't."

"I did. The alcohol... but not just me, son. You did as well."

Castle sank back against the wall, breath crushed from his lungs. He'd left her. He had. He'd faked his death and he'd _left_ her. Just as everyone else in her life had done. "Oh, God."

"But you came back. I came back - that's what counts now, son. You hear me? This isn't about what you did or didn't do. This is about Kate. So stand up."

How did her father know that Castle was practically on the floor?

He straightened up, Jim Beckett's voice like a commanding officer, felt himself gripping the phone too tightly, his body a taut wire. "I came back," he repeated.

"That's right. That's what counts. She knows why you did it, but my daughter - there are only so many times you can put yourself back together again after loss like that. And when it happens over and over, you start getting gunshy, Rick. So when you give her hell for doing something so fantastically stupid - which I certainly hope you do - remember that she just doesn't want to be left again."

"I won't - I'm not leaving-"

"Death can do it with or without your permission," Jim rasped.

There was a long silence in which Castle just hoped to breathe, to make his lungs work, and then Jim sighed and the terrible weight shifted enough for Castle to pull in air.

"I'm sorry. That was harsh," Jim said.

"No, I - I'm good. Needed to hear that."

"I was harsh with her too, if it helps," Jim said, a soft chuckle in his voice. "Equal treatment for my two."

Castle's eyes slammed shut and he sank the rest of the way to the floor, the back of his skull against the wall. After everything, after racing out here to find Kate, after seeing his own father hold his wife hostage, after having_ his own father_ put a gun to his ribs and march him out to a plane, Jim Beckett was too much.

"Son," Jim said.

"I'm okay," he got out.

"Go get her."

"Yes, sir," he whispered.

"Don't call me sir," Jim chuckled. "Call me Dad or Jim. And I'll see you both when you get home."

The phone call ended.

Castle hauled himself to his feet and pressed the heel of his hand into his eye socket, pushed hard until colors exploded in the black of his vision. And then he opened the door to Reynolds's room.

Kate was sitting in the dark near the bed, bowed over the kid's side, and her shoulders were hunched nearly to her ears. He cleared his throat and softly called her name.

She turned, her face wan in the faint light coming in from the hallway.

"Come here," he murmured.

She stood but didn't come, stayed poised on the edge of something, so Castle did the work. He took two strides into the room and crushed her against his chest, gripping her hard and fierce and forever, so he'd never leave her.

She shuddered against him, her arms coming up to bind him, her fingers gripping the nape of his neck, and they clung together, silent and no longer separate.

* * *

><p>"He told you the combination, just like that?" Mitchell grunted.<p>

"Yeah. Rick, where is your phone? Mine isn't a smart phone," she said, reaching for Castle's.

"Back to 'Rick' now?" Mitchell smirked. "You guys kiss and make up?"

Kate lifted her head and saw the same death stare on Castle's face that she was leveling at Mitch as well. Their friend chuckled and leaned against the side of the wall while Kate opened the smart phone her husband had pilfered from Deleware's body. "Okay, it's the numbers in pi, which is-"

"Is that all?" Castle grumbled. "I know know the numbers in pi."

"To the ninth place?" Kate asked.

"Yes, actually."

"No way."

"Yes way," he grinned back. He elbowed her away from the door and bent over the keypad. He pressed each number as he spoke it aloud, and Kate followed along on the phone to check. "Three point one four one five nine two six five... how many is that?"

"Only eight places," Kate said, wondered if the pause would break his rhythm. But Castle murmured it over to himself and punched in the last number.

Three.

"What a nerd," Mitchell scoffed even as the door clicked and the internal gears shifted. The reinforced steel and alloy was slow to release, but when Castle started putting some muscle into the wheel, it turned and the door came open.

The weapons room was the size of a janitor's closet sans ventilation or outside ducts; it housed mostly guns and ammunition, hand grenades, a few over the shoulders. It was the weapons locker for the station should it need to be defended.

"What's this?" Castle muttered, pushing his shoulder halfway into the room and bending over.

Kate came up at his back and glanced past his body to look. The whole left side of the small room looked like it had been remade into a kind of storage locker, chrome and plastic with a smooth latch. Castle was already tugging it open and the door swung out to reveal foam padding around what looked like long sleeves of ammunition.

"Are those bullets?" she asked, confused by all the care taken to keep them safe and insulated.

Insulated.

"Holy shit," Castle muttered. He reached inside like he knew exactly what he was doing and what it was.

"Wait, Castle. It might be-"

Kate gasped. Castle had slid the long container out of its nesting spot in the padded locker and inside each case were rows and rows of pills.

"It's the stabilizers," he rasped.

Relief washed through her so great that she had to reach out and clutch Castle to keep herself standing.

* * *

><p>Of course.<p>

His father wasn't an evil mastermind bent on world domination. There was only one world he wanted to rule and this was his weapon of choice.

The regimen - to subjugate his son, Rick Castle.

"That's it?" Mitchell scoffed. "I thought it would be something fun. I'm outta here. Got stuff to do."

Castle watched his friend back out of the weapons room and head off down the hallway; he realized Mitch was carrying the load on this one, that the man had shouldered the burden of this mission without another word. There were international relations to keep up and oversight from the higher-ups, there would be a protocol here that they'd have to follow and reports to write, clean-up and containment. A host of bureaucratic entanglements that Castle had completely shirked in order to find his wife.

He wondered if Beckett even realized, if she knew how far the ripples went out from her actions. Not just himself, but Reynolds and Mitchell, the meetings they'd have to sit in on and the senators they'd have to placate, the station chief in Tunis and whatever missions they'd unwittingly ruined because of their presence.

And now they were alone inside the weapons room and she was staring at the regimen pills as if everything had been worth it.

"Beckett," he growled, his hands slamming the lid shut on the pills.

She startled but she reached for the container as if to protect it, shield it from him. "What?"

"Stop looking at it like it's a gift from heaven."

"But it _is_," she said. This time she took the container from him and turned towards the open locker door, ran her fingers over the stacks and stacks of pills in their clear plastic. "Look at all of this, Castle. This is your _life._"

"Funny how you didn't invite me along on this expedition to reclaim my life," he snapped.

Her head jerked around to him. "You..."

"No, _you_." He reached out and snagged the case, tossed it behind him to the floor, ignoring the way her heart broke in her eyes. "You, Kate. You are my life. Not these."

"It _maintains_ your life. These things - these pills keep you alive, Rick. And you can't dismiss it so easily."

"I'm not-" Castle shut his mouth before he could start yelling again, before it swamped him with its agony and anguish. He wanted only for her to not throw herself into the maws of certain death and she was acting like _he_ was the one dying.

He remembered her father's warning and he closed his eyes, tried to heed it. Everyone had abandoned her. He knew something about being abandoned. He dragged up the clear and cold memory of standing outside the admin building at boarding school and waiting for someone to come pick him up for the winter holidays, the sharp break of pine needles underfoot and the hopes for Christmas with his mother and her theater - all her melodrama and her smothering love and the epic lines she pulled as if from thin air. Shakespeare, he knew now, and the theater and drama had been crutches for a shaky self-confidence, and Christmas hadn't come.

He knew something about being abandoned. About standing outside in the freezing weather, not allowed to come back into the lodge until he'd memorized the Chinese phrases his father had been drilling into his head, seeing the red-orange glow through the windows from the fire in the hearth but allowed no part of it.

But she'd given that back to him.

"I'm not leaving you, Kate," he said finally. "It's not even a promise I'm making. It's just fact." He reached out and snaked his arm around her neck and pulled her into him, needing it but not sure he wanted it. "I'm not leaving, but it seems clear to me that you're set on leaving me first-"

"What are you even talking-" she started, grunting into his shoulder.

He squeezed her harder. "Throwing yourself off the cliff's edge of disaster and jumping straight into death. You keep doing it. Like you're trying to get away from me, leave me-"

"No-"

"So let's jump together," he finished. He didn't want to - he wanted her to not go jumping - but this was marriage, right? All about the compromise. "Now I understand, okay? I get it. My life. So let me do this with you, Kate."

She was stiff in his arms, her eyes looking past his shoulder to the damn pills in their clear plastic container, and he waited for her answer.

"Just like that?" she asked.

"Just like that. Yes. Don't mistake me here. I'm still pissed at you. So very - shit. You can't go lunging at knives as your _first _option to resolve a situation, Beckett. Fuck, we are not done with that conversation. We are _not done_. Putting your throat to the blade is never okay. Never. We-"

"Okay, I know. I hear you. I hear you, Castle. But I just-"

"No. There are no exceptions to that rule. None. I'm making a damn compromise here and so will you. You understand me?"

"Yes."

His breath caught, waiting, but there was nothing else. No _but I_, no explanation, no persuasive tactics.

"Just like that?" he echoed.

She choked on a laugh and nudged out of his tight grip. "You'll chase after the regimen - wherever it is or whatever we have to do - even if it's your father... and all I have to do is not consider death my first option for solving problems?"

"Shit, I'm bad at compromising," he muttered.

"So if it's my second option..."

"You're not funny."

"A little funny." Her hand was busy at his waist, tunneling under his shirt, skimming his hips.

He frowned at her. "I'm still furious. This isn't a _we're going to laugh about this later_ kind of thing, Beckett."

"You can be angry. But we probably will laugh about it later. Remember the freezer in Paris? When I put my fingers in your mouth so you could warm them up?"

He growled and felt her fingers now, plenty hot, making designs at his ribs. "I hate you," he grumbled.

She laughed again, this time more real, a fuller and richer sound, and her hands came around to his chest, skin to skin under his shirt. She was in his arms again, her hips bumping his in invitation, and he took it.

He came in close and sealed his mouth to hers, a little punishing, the force of his demands in that kiss. That he had to compromise at all when it came to keeping her from being the sacrificial lamb, that he had to _give way_ when she wanted to do something almost guaranteed to end in tragedy - it made him so angry that he lost control.

Her body hit the edge of the door and then the force of him drove her back against it, slamming it shut as she arched into him, their kiss desperate and furious. She moaned with pain or need, he couldn't tell, but her mouth opened to him and he pushed inside, stroking his tongue across hers to devastate her as much as she'd done him these last few days.

Her leg twined around his and shifted, knocking him off balance and throwing him into her. They let out twin gasps as their bodies made contact; he saw the sparks of green flickering in the darkness of her eyes.

She wanted him and she wanted to celebrate their finding the regimen; he could see it in the way the desperation rolled over her, cresting with relief. They had half of the regimen and it would last him for years and years, and she was high on it.

"With me," he rasped into her mouth, dragging a hand down to her pants. "With me, Kate. Not alone."

She gasped, hips writhing at his touch. "No fun alone," she got out.

"Promise me."

"Promise, promise," she tossed back, easily, too easily, but it was enough.

He wrapped his hand at the back of her thigh and dragged her into him, pressed her hips to the door and found a way to make it work.

Despite his anger.


	12. Chapter 12

**Close Encounters 14**

* * *

><p>Beckett sat close to him on the narrow ledge that surrounded what was left of the courtyard fountain. The water had been turned off so it wouldn't flood, and the trunk of the orange tree was charred.<p>

"There are still a few branches untouched," he said beside her.

She glanced overhead at the stripped bark and the nasty scars. She saw what he meant; there were a few places where green might come back again. "Yeah. I guess it will survive. I don't know how beautiful it will be like that."

"Surviving can be pretty damn beautiful," he said quietly.

Kate turned her head to him and studied how the light from the laptop painted his face in blues. "It is beautiful. You're right."

He went back to watching the monitor as they tracked his father through the air. She settled closer, their shoulders brushing, and she tried to figure out how to ask for what she needed.

"What comes next?" she said, her eyes on the glowing dot. Still directly over the continent. The dark continent it had been called, named for the wilds and extremes of the landscape. Only the brave, more reckless explorers had wanted to set off through its dense jungles and sub-Saharan region, to trek from Ottoman wealth in the Arab world to the unknown.

Black had been in the air for three hours.

"What comes next," Castle repeated slowly. His hand was curved over the trackpad of the laptop, so large, almost protective. "Well, we've packed the stabilizers to go back with Mitchell. He'll keep half of them at the Office and you and I will take the other half. We might need to consider getting some kind of off-site safe. I don't want this all in one place. Too many precious things in our home."

She closed her eyes and leaned her head against his shoulder. "Yes," she whispered. In case their home was ever blown up like her apartment, was that it? Chilling. She didn't want to think it could happen, but that was always a possibility, no matter how carefully paranoid they were.

"But what comes next..." The call of his voice in the dark night made her eyes open. His fingers flexed on the keyboard and he tapped against the glowing dot. "I guess this is what comes next."

The relief that poured through her was so great, she had to wind her arm through his and hold on. He turned his head and kissed her temple, but whereas his words had put her at ease again, she felt how tense he was in comparison. Rigid. He didn't want to be doing this, but he was going to anyway.

"Soon as he lands, we'll follow," Castle sighed. "Mitch will coordinate with whichever government it is, but we've got to keep it quiet. And not just because I don't want Black to know we're following him. Also because the official story is that one of our own has gone rogue. No government wants to hear that."

"It's going to be an international manhunt?" she murmured.

"Yes."

"Do you think that's wise? Labeling him a rogue agent means extreme force, Castle."

"I know you don't like it," he said quietly. "But this is the compromise, Kate."

"But if some idiot in a brother agency goes for him, they could kill him rather than take him alive."

"I don't have any problem with that."

She growled in frustration and knocked her head into his shoulder. "You should have a problem with it. Not only is he your father, Castle, but he's the only one who knows what he did to you. What the regimen does, what it's effects are, how-"

"Beckett. I've got the best doctors on it and they'll figure it out. It's thirty year old science - it can't possibly be beyond them."

"How long does the regimen last, though? The injections and stabilizers he gave you here - damn it, Castle, I don't even know that he did. How can I prove that the pills he crushed up and put in your mouth were the stabilizers at all?"

"I know," he said calmly. "I could taste it on my tongue when I woke. Can't fake that."

"Oh." She knew it was a weak argument, but she'd always been able to rely on Black to have Castle's interests at heart when it came to that.

"And I feel differently," he sighed. A confession. "I can tell already. You saw my hand."

"Your hand was already healing before your father gave you anything. It could still just be the effects of the serum-"

"No, I know, but look at it now," he said and flipped his palm over.

A scar marred the heartline, and it was fresh and raw, but it wasn't what it should have been. It wasn't the angry weep of blood or the ragged edges of skin that refused to come together. A wound at such a vital place - where movement and repeated use would pull and prevent healing...

"Wow," she breathed.

"Yeah. But it's not uncommon for me. Remember my story about the pirates who tried to cut off my hand?"

"Yes," she whispered. "Of course."

"Right," he said bitterly. "Of course you do. You put it up on that timeline in the closet. All my stories - dissected like evidence."

She took a sharp breath at the tone of his voice, smoothed her fingers at the scar around his wrist. "I was trying to figure it out, find places where you'd been severely injured, hoping your father had stores of the regimen hidden around the world. And maybe I could get it."

"That's why?"

"Yeah. I'm sorry - I know it must look... impersonal. All your details out there, cold black and white. That's not what it meant to me; I was only trying to _know_. It's - it is so personal to me, Castle. Your life is my life."

"It looked like your mom's case," he said quietly. The fingers of his formerly wounded hand curled up around hers. "That scared me. How far you fell into that one and now this... this takes its place?"

She couldn't find words to argue against that, but the two were so unalike. "That was death. This is your life," she said finally.

"I don't want my _eventual_ death to be what we dwell on here, Kate. I don't want my imagined fate to be the thing you can't see past, so that it crowds up our life until we don't even have a future any more."

She laid her cheek against his shoulder again, not even caring that it made her jaw ache and transmit that pain to the grazed side of her face. She wanted the warmth of him against her, wanted the seal of their skin. "Right now... I'm thinking about you. And how I want the father of my children to be there to see their first smiles and first days of school. How I want to ensure your health - and our control of the regimen - because our future is integral on you being there."

He sighed and lifted their joined hands, kissed the back of her knuckles. "I can agree on that if you acknowledge the same is true for you. Our future is integral on you being there. You are my future, Kate."

She flushed, hot and aroused for no reason she could imagine, struck deep by his words and his capitulation that was also a command. How could she ever explain how this was for them, between them? Deleware had seen their fight in Castle's apartment and how he'd chained her to the bed, but he'd had no idea. Demand laced in submission, topping from the bottom, that was how they worked - and it _worked_ so well.

"I can agree on that," she echoed. "You were telling me a story?"

"Right, about my hand nearly getting chopped off. Well he lifted the machete and hacked at me, but I flipped my hand around and caught the edge of the blade and his wrist, escaped with only a wound, much like this one. I'm used to it - knowing my limits - and when I grabbed for the knife... you know, that same knife you were trying to slit that gorgeous throat with?"

"You think you're so funny."

"I don't think it's funny at all," he said darkly. "When I grabbed for the knife, it wasn't anything I hadn't already lived through before."

She digested that slowly, the edges of his split-second reasoning and the sheer infinite limits of his abilities.

"You see, Kate? When _I _do it, I know I'll survive. I know the wound will heal quickly enough for me to use my hand in a few hours' time. I'll admit - I think the tendon is a little stiff, or maybe it's scar tissue. But this wasn't anything I haven't handled before."

"Unlike me," she said, spitting the words out.

"Unlike you. Your throat won't heal so pretty."

She lifted her hand to her neck and felt the edge of the bandage. "The knife barely got me. It will heal."

"The bullet graze?"

"Probably leave a mark," she admitted. "But it's worth it."

"I don't want to hear you say that again."

She closed her mouth, anger leaking back through the cracks in all their walls. She sucked in a deeper breath and tried to keep from saying something stupid and ruining whatever progress they had made.

He sighed like it was an apology. "But you asked what comes next. We go after Black together - because at least then I can grab the knife before you get to it."

"I won't - that won't happen," she said. "It wasn't... it was for show, to make him think I'd do it and then he'd have nothing to hold over your head, no leverage."

"It was too good a show, Beckett. You managed to convince me as well."

And the truth was, maybe she would in the future, maybe she had because that was how it always was going to be for her. Willing to gamble big. But she won big, didn't she? Here they were.

"So we have a stockpile of the pills. And we need serum for the injections," he said, ticking them off on his fingers like bullet points. "Wherever Black is going isn't a guarantee that the regimen will be there, but-"

"But his desperation to get inside that weapons room makes me think it will."

"Exactly," he sighed. "And to be honest, since we're doing that now - the honesty thing-"

"I know you can't be looking at me when you say that," she said, narrowing her eyes.

His smile flashed tightly across his face, fingers squeezing hers. "To be honest, I don't want to ever see him again. I don't want you to ever see him again, and I don't want him to even _look_ at you again. I hope he lands wherever it is, we go after him, and we miss him, but maybe we find something else worth taking. Maybe we follow him around the globe as he rebuilds and we get the chance to knock it down before he can put the pieces all together again. I don't mind stealing from him and destroying his damn plans. But I wish I could take you home first, hide away with you until neither of us have scars."

She wondered if that would be how it happened next, if they'd fly into some remote location only to be too late, wind up with nothing. Would they be following his father around the world forever? She actually _didn't_ want that.

"I want an end to this," she offered. "I want to not be doing this in six months. Just like you, I want more for us than that."

"Can we agree on that, then?" he gruffed. He sounded rough around the edges, like a man who craved sleep but knew he wouldn't get it. "Can we agree that after this stop, we'll just go home? I really just want to go home, Kate."

"Yes," she said, the relief and grief of that tangling up in her. The way he sounded, the abandoned and mistreated little boy of him, the one left out in the cold. "Whatever happens next, after that we go home."

"Together," he added. "No use planning a future without you, without _either_ of us."

"Together," she promised. "We'll go home together."

She crossed her fingers that when they chased after Black, there would be something - anything - of the regimen there for them, for _him_, because she really wanted - it was imperative - that she keep this promise.

* * *

><p>Rick Castle sank back against the crumbling stone and rubbed a hand down his face. Beckett had gone to pack their supplies since Mitch had acquired a plane for them, a loan from the CIA station chief in Tunis. That must have been quite the conversation judging from the way Mitchell was swearing as he came into the courtyard.<p>

Castle cleared the spot next to him of rubble and patted it, giving his friend a sardonic look. Mitchell shifted on his feet, glared down at him, but then claimed the seat.

"He's fucking pissed," Mitch growled. "He had _no idea_ that this island station was out here."

"I don't know what to tell you, Mitch. Honestly. I didn't know that it was some kind of secret."

"Not only did he not know about it - he didn't know Reynolds was out here with some top secret prisoner."

"I swear," Castle said again. "I swear I had no idea."

"Then how did you even know about it?"

"Did you ask Reynolds how he got the job?"

"Black, of course. Did you not know that either?"

"No," Castle sighed, scrubbing at his jaw as he put the pieces together. "But I guess - I don't know if it was just a lucky coincidence for Black or if he somehow... he couldn't possibly have suggested it to me. _Hey, son, lock me up in this place I know._ Right?"

"I don't see how. Unless those freaky pills hypnotize you or something."

Castle felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up and he hunched his shoulders. "No. That's - no. If it did, do you think I'd be here? You think Kate would be here?"

"Right."

"What'd you end up telling the station chief in Tunis?"

"That the place was his to control now. That we're undergoing some change in power structure at the home office and somehow this got overlooked."

"He bought that?"

"No. But he's sending a team over to 'help' and he'll take control of maintenance and rebuilding. He'll probably ditch it when he sees how wrecked it is, but anyway - Reynolds is coming home with us."

"You treat him-"

"I know. I won't let him hang."

Castle nodded, dropping his hands to the closed laptop. Black had been flying for nearly four hours. Soon Castle and Beckett would take to the skies as well, tracing the signal, and wait for his father to stop. He hoped Black had moved on before they arrived, but if there was a confrontation, this time he didn't plan on being nice.

He'd shoot his father and ask questions later.

"What's your best guess about this place?" he said finally.

"My best guess?" Mitchell answered, looking like he'd cooled off somewhat. "Huh. Best guess is that Pops has stashes of your pills and shit all over the world and this just happened to be one of those places. I bet it was on your mind as a safe location to squirrel away dear old Dad because he'd used it himself to squirrel his stuff away."

"I thought of it because Reynolds had been on our team from the beginning, because he'd seen Beckett then and knew her now, and I knew whoever was in charge of Black's detention would need to go into this with his eyes open."

"But he didn't have all the information, Castle. You never told anyone outside our circle that Black tried to assassinate her. Come on - seriously - did you think Reynolds wouldn't ask Black himself?"

"I thought he'd be more loyal to me than my father."

"Loyalty - especially loyalty to you - doesn't include being dumb. Or not being curious. Shit, man, you encourage us to second guess you. Beckett herself comes up with alternate ideas and tries them out while you look on. So of course poor Reynolds is gonna ask some fucking questions."

"I know it's my fault," he snapped. A growl rumbled in his chest but he rubbed his hands over his eyes again and took a breath. "It's my fault. I set him up for this, all of us up for this. I should have dealt with Black myself."

"Killed him, you mean."

Castle couldn't quite bring himself to say it out loud. Not because he didn't want to, but because the thought of Beckett's disappointment was nearly crushing.

"You couldn't have killed him - not back then. Too many still following his orders. Fuck, Deleware dead out here - not three feet from where we're sitting - and who knows how many else? Bryce is still missing. There was that station chief in Singapore - and we don't even know _why_ he followed Black into the darkness."

"I'd forgotten them," Castle said. Shit, he'd dropped the ball on so many things when he'd gotten sick. He'd pushed it all off on Mitch and Beckett, and so of course Kate was going to do something like this - fly halfway around the world because she was taking up all his damn slack anyway.

Because he'd been forgetting things, because he'd been clumsier lately and not as steady and not _super,_ she hadn't been able to count on him.

Well, that would change - that had changed. He'd had the injection and the stabilizers; its worth had already been proven by the healed scar on his hand. He knew now that he needed the regimen to deliver on all of the promises he'd made to Kate.

"You'll take care of the pills for us?" he said quietly. "I promised Jim he'd have some too, even though Kate... but he gets a case of them for back-up. And then divvy up the rest."

"Of course," Mitch answered. "Fuck, after all this, I'm sure as hell not losing them."

Castle let out a grunt in answer, his body suddenly heavy. But not with anything physical - not with pneumonia or blood loss; no physical toll had been taken, not when he had the regimen. It was in his spirit, a heaviness in his soul. Because this was their life - his and Kate's life together - and he had trouble seeing an end to all of this.

"I got it, man," Mitchell said, knocking a fist into his shoulder. "Stop your heavy sighing. Besides, you didn't see yourself when we took you out of the hospital and you couldn't even fucking breathe. Beckett - shit. I don't blame her for this. She has the ability to move heaven and earth for you, so of course she's gonna do it. She's fucking bad-ass, man. I sure as hell don't have the balls to go up against your pops."

Castle couldn't help feeling proud of her, like he'd done that, like her ability to just _survive_ had anything at all to do with him. Maybe it did, actually - that seemed to be what she was trying to get through his thick skull. He wanted to go home; of course he did. He wanted to pretend like he would be fine and she would be fine as well, but the truth was - he wouldn't. Some day he was going to need another infusion, another shot, and if he _wasn't_ fine, then neither was Beckett.

The green baize door swung open at that moment, charred and warped though it was, and out stepped Kate. She was wearing new clothes, which meant the guys from the mainland had gotten here with their supplies. Which meant the plane was ready. Which meant Beckett wanted to go.

She scraped her hand through her hair and held it on top of her head for a moment, the picture she made both svelte and stunning despite the blood staining her bandage and the bruises and scrapes flaring brightly along her cheek. She spotted them sitting on the fountain and she came towards them, a hesitant smile on her face.

He hated that she was uncertain about him, but he wasn't sure he could do anything to change that. She'd hurt him in a deep place, wounded something vulnerable in him that he knew King would probably suggest was leftover from his parents' abandonment, but he couldn't turn that off. It was part of why he loved her so much - because he loved her with all of himself, all those dark and unseen places - he loved her with the need and damage of a man who wasn't and never would be normal. But she'd shredded those places raw by leaving for Black.

Kate looked hesitant, but she didn't hesitate. She dropped down beside him and pressed in close, her arm threaded through his as if she needed to claim him.

Her kiss was soft and sweet at the corner of his mouth, like an apology, and when she pulled back Castle realized she probably was apologizing.

"Ready to go?" she murmured. "His plane is descending, losing altitude, so it's likely he's landing soon."

Castle closed his eyes for a moment, blocking out the charred rubble of the courtyard, the blackened orange tree, and he called up in his mind the image of his son from his dreams.

The boy. He couldn't see things like hair color and eyes, couldn't actually hear the tone of the boy's voice, but he felt him like an impression, felt him like an idea about to be made reality.

Still there. Still vibrant and living in Castle's head. He hadn't gone anywhere; he was still possible.

He opened his eyes and saw Kate's anxious ones. He brought his hand up to her cheek and stroked his thumb across the bruise, so lightly, paying his respects to everything she'd done for him. He leaned in and kissed his wife softly on that bruised, scraped cheek.

"Where are we going?" he asked finally.

"Looks like Eastern Gabon."

"Oh good," Mitchell said nastily. "Into the heart of darkness you go."

_The horror, the horror._

* * *

><p><strong>Close Encounters 14: A View To A Kill<strong>

Stay tuned for **Close Encounters 15: Never Say Never Again**

* * *

><p>She stayed well behind him, watching the bunch and play of muscle under his shirt as he hacked at the terrain with the machete. He was probably taking out on the underbrush what he wanted to take out on her, but she couldn't help her fascination with the way his body moved through the dense African jungle.<p>

Kate wanted him in a really desperate but inappropriate way.

She knew it was a product of anguish, that she made herself feel better by having him, but she also knew that he was going to explode if she didn't do something to help him. He was deeply angry with her - for reasons she had to admit she didn't quite comprehend - and he was refusing to acknowledge it existed.

Maybe taking a machete to the rainforest would help, but not for long.

He was the kind of man who had been trained to suppress all of it - let it roll right off of him - and she appreciated that. She knew she had enough issues to keep them both occupied, but it meant they tended to forget his.

He was seriously pissed.

But he wanted her too, and that made him angrier, and that was a problem.

If he'd just let her-

Castle whacked at a tree and got the machete stuck in the trunk; he cursed and she sighed, pausing in the trail of carnage he'd left behind. Decapitated birds-of-paradise flowers, decimated vines, orchids shredded, mangrove roots butchered. Philodendrons with thorny protrusions were in pieces, weeping chlorophyll and thready bark.

The rest she had no names for. Sucker roots, tendrils of green, waxy leaves that still held rainwater - not just a few mouthfuls but _gallons_ - an entire ecosystem in miniature, with tadpoles swimming in the deepest pool, a scorpion crawling through a clump of twigs, and a cluster of flies, all within the bowl of a leaf. She saw moss and ferns, air plants with no discernible means of support, mushrooms sprouting over a thick film of decomposing vegetation. And that was just the growth at hip level.

It was a riot of life, and most of it deadly.

Kate hurriedly came to his side and touched his hip as he grunted at the tree. "Here," she murmured. "Step back."

Castle glared at her, but let go of the machete's handle. She used her boot to kick at the blade where it was lodged in the side of the tree. After four good blows, it popped out, tumbling to the forest floor.

"Careful," she warned as he bent to pick it up. "I saw a scorpion back there."

"And snakes, I'm sure. Poisonous tree frogs. Man-eating venus flytraps."

Kate glanced to where he was pointing now with the machete and saw he was right. What she'd call a venus flytrap looked to be the size of a cow, the open maw dripping with paralyzing venom.

"Holy shit," she gasped.

"Yeah, exactly. Nice little trip to the woods you've planned for us, Beckett."

Some of the bitterness was gone from his voice this time, the sarcasm not quite so heavily laced with anger. She looked at him and he held out his free hand to her.

"Come here," he muttered. His eyes flickered over her, a sudden reluctant concern.

She stepped closer and he grabbed her arm, drew her against him. When she came at his side, he reached up, covered her shoulder with his cupped palm and seemed to scrape. In a moment he was throwing something deep into the underbrush.

"What was that?" she whispered.

"Spider." He gave her a crooked, pained smile. "Pretty - uh - big. Not sure how'd you react to that."

"I'd be okay," she said slowly. "Rats don't bother me, spiders. How big?"

"Hairy tarantula big," he admitted. "And it filled my whole hand."

She blinked. "Shit."

"Yeah. This is going to be interesting."

Suddenly Beckett's senses were opened and she realized the whole rainforest was _alive_ with sound and movement. Beasts deep in the jungle were out there, just beyond their vision, and a million different insects lurked. It wasn't just the blow flies or the spiders - it was everything. The whole rainforest was _aware_.

"This is... how are we going to _sleep_ out here?"

"One eye open," he joked. His smile fell flat though and he grimaced at her. "We have a pup tent. We'll have to be very careful to seal it tight."

She nodded and gripped the straps of her backpack, her eyes scanning the jungle ahead. "And Black... he's out here somewhere in all this."

"He must have a station, a depot or a facility. My father's not the type who roughs it, you know."

"Good point," she said, letting out a breath. "All right. Lead on, Castle. Standing still will only let this place grow up around us."

She saw goose bumps flare across his forearms, but other than that, he seemed completely impassive. Castle turned and hefted the machete once more, his phone and the map-tracking system in his other hand, and he started clearing their path through the growth.

But he moved a little more carefully, taking time to pause and inspect his way before carving out their route. And Beckett kept a little closer, her ears filled with the noise of a predatory rainforest.

* * *

><p><strong>Close Encounters 15: Never Say Never Again<strong>

(no, seriously, I am running out of James Bond movie titles)


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